Decatur, Indiana - June 19, 2005 – Page 3 of 3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The General Electric factory that manufactured general purpose motors closed around 1990 and the work went to Mexico. My dad worked here during World War II, and I spent some time here in the 1980s helping implement a real-time inventory and production tracking system.

 

 

The Bunge Ltd. Central Soya plant started in 1934 as an adjunct to an existing sugar beet processing plant and grew rapidly. The plant processes soybeans into meal and oil, and ships its output via the CF&E Railroad.

 

 

 

The Grand Rapids & Illinois Railroad, along with the Michigan Central Railroad, built and operated the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. The Pennsylvania Railroad operated the full-service Northern Arrow over the GR&I between Cincinnati and Mackinaw City on weekends as late as 1961. Travelers could buy sleeping car accommodations, ferry passage to the island, transfer to the hotel, and hotel reservations through railroad ticket agents.

 

The line became part of Penn Central and then Conrail, and was operated by CSX after Conrail was partitioned between NS and CSX. Currently it is leased to Chicago Fort Wayne & Eastern, a division of RailAmerica. CF&E operates the entire former PRR route between Gary, Indiana and Crestline, Ohio.

 

 

 

 

CF&E's power roster is made up entirely of GP38-2 units previously owned by C&NW. The color scheme is a spiffy departure from RailAmerica's red-white-and-blue, and I didn't see any RailAmerica markings on the loco.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

End of train, end of thread. 'Bye for now.

 

excellent series of pics, rob

Wow...I never thought I'd see a three-part series of Decatur, IN pics!  Nice job.

 

What took you to Decatur that day?

What took you to Decatur that day?

 

I grew up near Bluffton and not terribly far from Decatur and Berne. That day I had been visiting Mom at the nursing home in Bluffton and wanted a little "unwind" time, so I detoured through Decatur on the way back to Fort Wayne.

 

My dad worked at GE in Decatur during WWII, and I started school at Lincoln School there. We lived in a 1937 subdivision called Homestead, with little houses all alike, arranged around the periphery of a circular park area. There was a playground on one side of  the park, and a farmer grew hay in the rest of it. I remember watching them make hay in the summer when I was about six years old. We moved to a farm south of Bluffton at the end of 1947.

I grew up near Bluffton and not terribly far from Decatur and Berne.

 

I was impressed by the constistency of Swiss-looking (I'm fearful to say Swiss architecture) buildings in Berne; they've even been able to get new chain development to enbrace it. Berne kind of resembled the Sugarcreek photos mrnyc recently posted.