ByGone Muncie: Ghost railroads of Delaware County
- Muncie was once home to a variety of railroads, including CSX Transportation, Norfolk Southern Railway, and the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway.
- Muncie also had a network of streetcars and interurban lines that connected to nearby towns and cities.
When I was a kid in the 1980s, one of my favorite TV shows was the anthology drama “Amazing Stories.” Created by Steven Spielberg, the series ran for two seasons on NBC and featured 45 episodes of supernatural fantasy and science fiction.
The first episode, “Ghost Train,” was my favorite. It’s about an old man named Opa who moves into a new home with his family. The house was built over an abandoned railroad line, a fact only Opa knows. As a boy 75 years earlier, he had unintentionally derailed the Highball Express train here, killing everyone on board. In the final scene, a phantom locomotive crashes through the house and collects the old man into the afterlife.
As always with Spielberg, the storytelling was exceptional. But really, I just loved the idea of a ghost train: an old, abandoned railroad with a haunting history. Sadly, I have yet to find any spectral locomotive stories about Muncie, but long-forgotten rail lines did once cross Delaware County’s landscape.
The earliest railroads to reach Muncie still exist today as class 1 (large) carriers: CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway. CSX’s route through Delaware County began in 1852 with the Indianapolis & Bellefontaine Railroad. In later years, it was known as the Big Four, New York Central and Conrail.
Norfolk Southern began in Muncie as two different railroads in the 1870s: the Fort Wayne, Muncie & Cincinnati and the Lafayette, Muncie & Bloomington. Both had consolidated into the Lake Erie & Western Railway by 1890 and became part of the Nickel Plate Road in 1922.
Although spurs, connectors and sidings changed over time, CSX and Norfolk Southern still largely follow their predecessors’ 19th-century routes through Delaware County. One notable exception was the Fort Wayne, Muncie & Cincinnati track that ran down Madison Street between Charles and Wysor. They were removed in 1953.
Delaware County’s best-known abandoned railroad is the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, today’s beloved Cardinal Greenway rail trail. It was known originally as the Cincinnati, Richmond & Muncie when it reached the Magic City in 1901.
The line eventually connected Cincy to Chicago via Richmond, Muncie, Marion, Peru and Hammond. It became part of C&O in 1910 and was absorbed into the Chessie System in 1973. Amtrak briefly ran on the line in the 1980s before it was abandoned and became a trail.
A walk or bike ride on the Cardinal Greenway today is a journey back in time. Though the track is gone, the route is full of old railroad markers. Of course, the splendid Cardinal Greenways headquarters occupies the former C&O station at the Wysor Street Depot.
Running parallel to the C&O through Muncie and northwest Delaware County was once the Chicago, Indiana & Eastern Railway. It was built to Muncie in 1900 from Matthews. At Converse, the line connected to the Pennsylvania Railroad’s busy Panhandle Route, offering fast service between Pittsburgh and Chicago.
C.I.&E. went bankrupt in 1907 and was taken over by the Pennsylvania Railroad. Munsonians thereafter called it the “Pennsy” or “Chicago Short Line.” At its peak during World War 1, eight trains ran daily between Muncie and Converse.
The line was abandoned in 1976 and the track removed. The most notable remnant in Muncie is the beautiful Pennsy Bridge at McCulloch Trailhead. The seven-panel Pratt Truss expanse was built in 1916. It was rehabbed in 2023 to carry the Cardinal Greenway over the White River.
I’d argue that Delaware County’s best example of a "ghost railroad” is the old Central Indiana Railway. The line first reached Muncie in 1899 as the Chicago & Southeastern, though most Munsonians called it the "Midland” or the "Mudhen.” Trains ran on the line between Muncie and Brazil, via Anderson, Noblesville and Lebanon. The Midland was built to deliver coal from west-central Indiana mines to factories in Muncie and Anderson as the natural gas began fading during the boom.
In Delaware County, the Midland ran east-west, just north of and parallel to Indiana 67 from Chesterfield to Progress (Sharp’s Station), where it turned northeast into Muncie. Abandoned in 1927, nothing remains of it today. If the railroad still existed, it would cut through the Red Dog Saloon and several houses in the Parkshire Place subdivision.
Two short intra-city railroads were built on the south side to connect factories to main lines, the Muncie Belt Railway in 1894 and the Muncie & Western in 1902. The latter ran through Blaine Neighborhood to Ball Brothers’ factories. It was abandoned in the 1990s. The line for the Muncie Belt Railway still exists, running from Spartech to Norfolk Southern through the Southside and Congerville neighborhoods. You can see the tracks on Hackley, Madison and Walnut streets, south of 18th.
Although not exactly a railroad, trolley tracks once crossed greater Muncie streets between 1890 and 1931. The first system, operated by Muncie Street Railway, featured steam-powered streetcars on three routes: the Avondale Line, running downtown through the Old West End to Kilgore, then south on Perkins to a turnaround at Ohmer Avenue (12th Street); the Industry Line extending east on Main to Ohio, then down Macedonia to Ball Brothers; and the Congerville Line running north-south on Walnut from downtown.
Muncie Street Railway failed in 1892 and was replaced by the all-electric, Citizens’ Street Railway. Citizens kept MSR’s three lines and added four more: the Westside Loop, nicknamed “Grasshopper Run,” which ran on West Jackson to Calvert, then on Gilbert and Celia to a turnaround at Westside Park; the Riverside Line, which crossed the White River at High Street and followed Wheeling to the fairgrounds; the Whitely Line, which linked downtown to McCulloch Park via Wysor; and the Heekin Park trolley, which zigzagged through the Industry Neighborhood into the park.
After Citizens became part of Union Traction in 1899, the company merged Riverside and Whitely lines into a north-side loop. But this was short-lived. Riverside’s tracks were destroyed and abandoned after the Great Flood of 1913.
Union Traction also combined the Heekin and Industry lines on 9th Street in 1916. But this was fleeting, too. Muncie’s trolleys stopped running early during the Great Depression. Only a small section of track remains visible today on Calvert Street.
And finally, beginning in the late 1890s, Muncie’s streetcar network expanded into electric Interurban lines that connected to nearby towns and cities. Delaware County had five routes linking Muncie with New Castle, Anderson, Winchester, Portland and Hartford City.
Union Traction started a sixth route to Alexandria by building abutments and clearing the right-of-way, but the track was never laid. The last Interurban left Muncie in 1941.
Natural gas often gets the credit, but it was really the railroads that made Muncie — a fact I try to remind myself of every time I’m stuck on Tillotson waiting for a slow, lumbering train to pass.
Just imagine how much worse traffic would be in Muncie if all those abandoned railroads, Interurbans and streetcars still ran — but then again, we’d all be riding in the trains.
Chris Flook is a Delaware County Historical Society historian and senior lecturer of media at Ball State University.