Robert Pence

Looks better in the photos than I remember it from a few years ago. Muncie once had a lot of heavy industry that paid good wages, but I think that except for the college, the economic picture there is pretty dismal. The cities in that part of the state (Muncie, Marion, Anderson, Kokomo) all were heavily dependent on the auto industry, particularly General Motors, and all of them are having a rough time of it.

What a mess! If we could get more of them to drive cars instead, it would relieve a lot of congestion on the bike paths.

Neither quick, IMO, nor all that dirty, but very good!

Impressive!

By the 1930s some of the midwestern lines ran pretty fast in the open country, but what killed the running times was the growing automobile interference on the street-running over city streetcar tracks to reach their downtown stations. There's a very excellent video titled Singing Wire 2 - Indiana Railroad, by Herron Rail, comprised of 8mm and 16mm film shot in 1938 just a few years before the 1941 end of the service from Fort Wayne through Indianapolis to Louisville, and in some of its scenes the problem is very evident. Also evident are the fast speeds that the trains achieved in open country. In 1925 utilities magnate Samuel Insull acquired many of the Indiana systems, consolidated some of them under Indiana Railroad, and invested a lot of money in new cars, track improvements, and better power distribution systems. An older gentleman who had been a long-time friend of my grandfather used to visit us when I was a teenager. He had been a motorman on the Indiana Railroad and he said that the new cars that Insull bought in 1928, advertised as able to reach 70mph, were easily capable of 80mph and often were operated that way. Although a scheduled local between Fort Wayne and Indianapolis, with numerous stops, took 4 hours, he said that with good planning and dispatching a chartered special with the "Indiana High-Speeds" could make the run in just over 2 hours, for an average speed of about almost 60mph, barring any encounters with buggies, wagons, autos, or livestock.

Cute. Looks like the Comerica Bank building might once have been a town hall/firehouse. Nicely maintained rail trail.

I'd expect by now that they'd understand the difference between light rail and intercity rail. Well, no, I wouldn't; it's the Dispatch. I probably should be pleased that the writer didn't refer to the electric trains as "chugging down the tracks." Incidentally, the line shown on the map as running northwest out of Lima was one of five lines that converged on Fort Wayne, and there was a direct connection between Dayton and Indianapolis, too. At their peak, the interurban systems created an interconnecting web that spread across most of the midwest and beyond. Some of the longest routes had available sleeping car, dining car, and parlor service providing comfort, convenience, and frequency comparable to or better than the steam railroads, especially for small towns, and without soot and cinders.

Largely well-preserved downtown. Nice.

At a company where I used to do tech support in the 90s, they used OS/2 as their operating system and it installed with various games including solitaire. At the time there were almost 3,000 PCs spread around the company, mostly for data input and customer service (account info inquiries). One of the top-ranking execs got on the warpath about too many people wasting too much time on solitaire, and put out an edict that we would not install the games on any new systems that we loaded, and uninstall them whenever we encountered them on a service call. One day that exec called tech support because his PC wouldn't boot. He was out of his office when I got there, and the fix only took a few minutes. I booted it up, and the first thing that loaded from his startup folder was solitaire! I pondered for a moment as to whether I ought to remove it per his edict, and thought, "Nah!"

^ :laugh: Nice bricks, cute town; the village hall is a gem! Sad about the fire. Insulbrick siding is awful in a fire; you may as well wrap an oil-soaked wrag around the building. The substrate is shredded paper-like fiber impregnated with asphalt, and once it heats up to ignition temperature, it takes off like a torch. I saw a house with that stuff burn. As it heated up, the exterior started to smoke. Then, a window blew out and the flames reached the siding, and in seconds the whole house was sheathed in flames.

Ha! Exactly what I was thinking, just now :-). Totally gay and totally FAAAB-U-LOUS! Sausagefest,Cleveland-style (takes both hands):

Pretty good for amateur, hand-held video. I love everything about that train; the sleek European styling and color schemes, the automatic sliding doors that let you pass between cars without being a line-backer or competition weight lifter, even the sweet, melodious sound of the diesel horn at the street crossing. Drivers on adjacent highways trying to pace trains are scary. I have this mental image of someone exceeding safe and legal speeds while on a cell phone with a buddy, giving a mile-by-mile narrative (or maybe shooting cell-phone video) and paying more attention to the train and his phone than to his driving.

It must have been an impressive place when it was new and well-maintained. Fort Wayne's TB hospital was Irene Byron, located several miles north of the city in what was open country then. In later years it was an extended care facility for people with advanced Alzheimers, etc. Most of the buildings have been demolished, and the newest part is in bad repair. It has been the headquarters for the Allen County Sheriff's Department for several years, but they will move downtown within a couple of years, and their present building likely will be razed.

Excellent photos of a beautiful city. I love the density, and the way they've repurposed historic buildings.

"misunderstood penthouse" :-) :-D :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: Very attractive downtown, though, and beautiful pics.

I'm glad you enjoyed. Over the past year or so I've noticed how the area has brightened up and become more diverse. It's a mix mostly of Appalachian, blue-collar, and retirees, and the residential properties range from tidy bungalows to low-rent multiplexes in former mansions with lots of vinyl or aluminum siding. For the most part, minorities are still clearly minorities here, but there's a gradual change. The area seems to be improving without gentrifying, and that's good to see. The diversity is exemplified by G.I. Joe's where you can outfit your militia, a short distance from Hyde Brothers Books where you'll find fans of Prairie Home Companion who study art and history, love classical music and jazz, and collect rare editions. The marker may be related to flood-plain surveys. Parts of that area used to be affected by flooding every few years, but construction of levees and flood walls (100-year flood plus 2 feet) by the Corps has done a lot to mitigate the problem. As a result, areas formerly designated as flood plain now are not, and that may be a factor in the improved economic picture there. I've reached an age where I have to to make sure my feet are where I think they are, so I look at the sidewalk a lot. That makes it easier to notice such things. :wink: I've seen a US Coast & Geodetic Survey benchmark somewhere nearby, but now I can't remember where it was. The Colonel's KFC gets most of the fried chicken business around here - it's the suburban culture, I guess, and he has a store in every farm town big enough to have a stoplight. Lees fits the neighborhood, though and I like it better. Grease makes everything taste better! I googled "Wells Street Bridge" and found it listed on one of the historic bridge sites. It once carried streetcars and interurbans into and out of downtown. Interurban freight was too heavy, though, hence the freight house on Commerce Drive. Edit: There are more photos from Fort Wayne here.

Wells Street - St. Marys River to State Street Fort Wayne, Indiana All Photos Copyright © 2010 by Robert E Pence A lot of work already has gone into the Wells Street Commercial Corridor, both by the city and by local citizens and merchants. The improvements in streetscape are evident with bumpouts, bollards, new transit waiting benches, and streetlights. There's more to be done, but it can't be done magically overnight. It's already more colorful and inviting, with businesses to attract a diverse demographic. Looking south across the old Wells Street Bridge, open to pedestrians and bicyclists, toward downtown. The bridge is a Whipple through truss, built by the Wrought Iron Bridge Company, of Canton, Ohio, in 1884. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. A new bridge for vehicle traffic was built just a little bit west of the old one. Saint Muddy Marys River. The Saint Marys River flows from Grand Lake Saint Marys at Celina, Ohio, to Fort Wayne, where it joins with the Saint Joseph River to form the Maumee River. The Maumee flows northeastward through Defiance, Ohio, to enter Lake Erie at Toledo. The part of Wells Street that once led to the bridge is now a stub that gives access to a few businesses. I've seen old photos of this building showing it when it still had it's second-story bay windows. The Cass Street Depot houses Fort Wayne Outfitters & Bike Depot, selling bikes and renting and selling kayaks. The station once served Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, and later New York Central trains between Fort Wayne and Jackson, Michigan. The remains of a former wooden passenger car that had last served as a camp car for railroad right-of-way maintenance crews. It burned, apparently set afire by arsonists. I took photos of the car in 1973 when it was stored on a siding in Ossian, Indiana, about 15 miles south of Fort Wayne. A long-time Wells Street business. Imagine MASTer Academy is a charter school on the grounds of a former Catholic orphanage, Saint Vincent's Villa. The Fort Wayne YWCA was located here for several years, but was unable to sustain the costs to maintain the facility and sold it. I've been past here at lunchtime, and they appear to be doing a very good business. I haven't tried the ice cream, yet, but I've heard they have unique flavors that are very good. One of two near-downtown Mexican Bakeries. Mexican pastries are tempting for their sheer beauty. Used books, two levels of a double storefront packed floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall and well-indexed. There are books of all sorts, on many subjects. It's a friendly store. For many years this building housed Wells Street Hardware, a place that seemed right out of the fifties or sixties. They had everything a hardware store could be expected to have, and repaired broken windows and torn screens. New owners closed up the street entrance leaving only a parking-lot entrance, and narrowed the inventory to emphasize paint and painting supplies. Their changes made the store look boarded up from the street; maybe that had something to do with their short tenure. I liked the original facade more than the cladding, but if the store serves a neighborhood purpose, good for them. I wish them success. Charles "Smoky" Montgomery was born in Cleveland, Tennessee, in 1922. He was a folk singer who never made it big on the professional scene, but he was a founding member of the Country Music Association. He came to Fort Wayne with a job in pharmaceuticals, and opened his record store in 1960. He was beloved in the community and always treated people well. His store was known as a source for hard-to-find 45s. Smoky died in 2006. If you enjoy listening to NPR while sitting back and browsing photo collections on the internet, this may not be your kind of place. A short digression down some nearby streets: Back to Wells Street: State and Wells, the northernmost limit of our walking excursion for today. State Street is a major east-west thouroughfare on the north side of what was Fort Wayne before sprawl. Here, we'll turn around and head back toward the river. Huffman Street - the cut down the center of the street is where the streetcar tracks used to run prior to 1947. It flares out toward where I was standing, because there were tracks turning both north and south on Wells Street, behind me. Jack & Johnny's has been closed for a long time. They used to do a booming business at lunchtime. I remember them as being famous locally for their cheeseburgers, probably one of the all-time most rewarding gastronomical experiences of my life. So good it was hard to not eat more than one per month, but I feared more than that might send me to an early grave. Commerce Drive once led to an interurban freight terminal; five interurban lines once radiated from Fort Wayne, and they used city streetcar tracks to access the downtown terminal and various freight customers that they served, usually at night after the streetcars shut down or ran less-frequent service. The interurbans also interchanged with the various steam railroads to deliver carload freight within the city, like coal for industrial boilers, grain for breweries, and chemicals for the city waterworks. Charis House, a women's and children's shelter, is building a new, larger facility to replace an older, smaller one on the edge of the Central Business District. Work is being done here. There's a new sidewalk, and yesterday I saw scaffolding. Never a dull moment. I was prowling the former Fourth Street railroad yard not far away, when I heard sirens. As I approached I could see smoke, but by the time I got here there was nothing to see except firefighters mostly stowing their gear.

Impressive bones. In a way, it reminds me of Youngstown -- one-time iron and steel powerhouse with magnificent, big, vintage buildings that are severely underutilized. Is any steel still being made in Birmingham?

Municipalities and their transit systems often are perceived by the public as having deep pockets when it comes to litigation, and there are people who will sue when they fall off a platform or trip over a rail, no matter what the circumstances. Even when those individuals don't prevail in their suit, the system operator may incur hefty costs defending itself. Experience has taught them to be extremely risk-averse, and it's understandable that they sometimes err on the side of caution. If volunteers are asked to sign a detailed and lengthy waiver or release from liability, how many of them do you think will do it, and how many will say, "Holy Sh*t! If it's that dangerous, I'm outta here!"

I'd think there would be a major liability issue with volunteers (non-RTA employees) in the system's rail ROW. Thorough safety training would be needed, probably along with a waiver excusing RTA from any liability for operations-related injury or death of a volunteer on the ROW. The hazards are great even for trained, supervised employees, and I can't see any system exposing volunteers to those hazards. All common-carrier freight and passenger railroads and urban heavy- and light-rail systems that I've seen have stringent prohibitions against trespassing because of the danger and liability risks.

Excellent event! It's nice to see a photo of a shiny Amtrak locomotive; usually when I see them in regular service, they're splattered with winter grime or summer bugs: The restoration of Toledo's Central Union Terminal after years of desecration by Penn Central and Conrail turned out rather stunning, and considering the marginal amount of use it gets, the platform area is well maintained and remarkably free of litter, tagging, and other vandalism. The last I knew, there were plans to co-locate Greyhound there. Has that happened yet? I don't watch TV, so I might have missed something ( :| ), but so far as I know, National Train Day passed with nary a peep from the media in Fort Wayne.

Thanks for the wonderful tour!

Looks like a good time, and I'll bet the taco truck operators like it!

Oh, My! What 19th-century gems! There seem to be a fair number of timber-frame commercial buildings surviving, a real rarity in most places.

The lighting brings out the saturated colors nicely.