GOING THE DISTANCE: Chasing Indiana's Most Unpredictable Short Line

The Connersville and Newcastle (reporting Mark; CNUR) Railway is part of the ex-NKP from Fort Wayne to Connersville. Norfolk Southern, which controls the portion from New Castle northward, as part of their busy “Newcastle District”, takes a huge east/westward turn at New Castle and hops on the old Pennsylvania Railroad line to Cincinnati. The CNUR had very few customers at either end of the line (the only one served regularly is Neal Scrap Metal in New Castle), so this railway lived off storage cars and they made some pretty great bank off of it. Because of this, seeing mainline runs from end to end were extremely rare.

My friend TJ and I were very fortunate to be able to document one of these runs on the First Day of Fall. Having no idea they were going to run nearly the entire distance of the line to pick up 105 coal cars heading back to North Carolina, we made the whimsical chase I’d always dreamed of doing to just north of New Lisbon and back. On the return trip, both engines began experiencing wheel slip in Milton, so one of the green GMTX project units came to the rescue and helped bring them the rest of the way.

In September of 2021, Norfolk Southern (who had leased out the CNUR to Beesons) revoked the lease and the CNUR was no more. A small portion of the railroad remains between Beesons and Connersville under the name "Big Four Terminal" while the remainder of the line was leased to the New Castle Souther Railroad, who's parent company is the Cincinnati Eastern Railway. Unfortunately, no new business really boomed along the main line once the lease was restored to another railroad, so a majority of the crossings that we shot this train at have had the rails paved over, which no business expected to show up within the near future. That made this an even more epic catch.

Join us on our chase along the former Nickel Plate, getting several rare, undocumented shots as we explore what East/Central Indiana has to offer.

Enjoy!