The Monon Railroad (1847-1971), Chicago-Based Railway Ending Up Running Exclusively Freight Trains in Indiana

[DonRocks]

Possibly interesting personal factoid: My great-uncle Sam was president of the Monon Railroad (1847-1971), which features in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. I believe he was the last president, and oversaw the merger of the Monon with the much larger Louisville and Nashville Railroad in 1971.

Indeed. I hope this doesn't leave anyone Monon, but:

 TO REMOVE THAT MUSIC FROM YOUR WEBSITE!

(Doesn't anyone see how cool this website is going to be? Help me get it started, by posting as much as you can, about as many different topics as you can, while I'm still around to point everything in a general direction. I already know it's going to be big (so if I get hit by a train, you don't need to say, "I wish he could have been around to see it"), but it *would* be nice to see things start growing during my lifetime.)

Cheers,

The Atomizer

[The Hersch]

In the list of presidents of the Monon, the last one, Samuel T. Brown, was my mother's father's elder brother, my Great-Uncle Sam.

[johnb]

I grew up about 20 miles from the nearest Monon tracks, which would have been in French Lick, a resort town in the old days and best known these days as the home town of Larry Bird.  Among other things French Lick was the home of Pluto Water (it was the springs that were the foundation of the resort development) and the place where FDR announced he would be a candidate for president.  Many rich and famous traveled there on the Monon in the old days, including celebrities and mobsters.  Our town was actually closer to the tracks of the Southern Railroad's line from Louisville to St. Louis, and my younger brother and I spent many evenings chasing trains on that line via a parallel highway.  They ran really big trains, as many as 200 cars, with five engines in the front and four more in the middle.  That was real power. Great stuff.