Indianapolis, Indiana
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The Louisville & Indiana's Z550 has just picked up a string of cars off the Indiana Railroad and is heading up the ramp. Their 25th anniversary unit is on the point with their Veterans unit trailing. Down below the Indiana Railroad's SAHW road train is pulled down and waiting on a road crew to show up for their run south out of town. The Indiana Railroad's 25th anniversary unit also happened to be in that power set. I haven't done a lot with either railroad but was certainly happy to luck into a day where the LIRC interchanged with the INRD catching both classy Indiana Railroads in one frame. Indianapolis, IN 3/21/2022
Early edition of Through Truss Tuesday:
Ten thousand feet of auto racks for the Honda plant at Marysville, Ohio, cross the Olentangy River at Caledonia. At one time this was jointly operated double track of the New York Central and Erie-Lackawanna Railroads. In 1985, ConRail removed the second main track through here. This is part of CSX's main line between Cleveland-Indianapolis, and St Louis. A big thanks to Todd Novak for the help in finding this guy...
On one of its last runs, Iowa Pacific's 'Hoosier State' sits at Indianapolis Union Station after arriving from Chicago.
An Indiana Rail Road local heads north along the former Indianapolis Union Railway on the east side of Indianapolis. This line was referred to as the “Belt Running Track” in Conrail timetables. We’re looking west towards downtown Indianapolis on the former B&O, which comes in from Cincinnati. The jointed rail in the weeds at the right is the former PRR main line from Columbus, Ohio, which by this date of 04MAR90 was long gone as a thru-route. I don’t know what Conrail was doing with this portion of the line in 1990.
The white mass in the background is the inflatable roof of the Hoosier Dome, now demolished. The PRR signal in the distance is facing away from us and controlled traffic heading east. On the PRR, this signal was near a location called Pine.
Finally, if memory serves, not visible in the concrete bridge abutments were the words “Belt Crossing” in tile letters. Another location called Belt Crossing was further south where the NYC Cincinnati Line crossed the Belt near the Citizens Gas & Coke Utility plant.
Winning the Pike's Peak race, and placing 6th at Indy, this car went to auction with $6-700,000 estimates, and actually sold for $1.1 Million! Gorgeously restored, this image is from Laguna Seca, and the owner/driver let us sit in it with the Imposing steering wheel dominating your vision.
'As early as 1929, Ab Jenkins set his sights on Indy, but it wasn't until 1931 that he took his best shot. He'd already known George Hunt, Studebaker's testing chief, from his time racing Studebakers in endurance runs in the late Twenties, and according to Gordon Eliot White's "Ab & Marvin Jenkins: The Studebaker Connection and the Mormon Meteors," Studebaker owed Jenkins for his expenses, so he cashed in that IOU in the form of off-the-shelf Studebaker Commander axles, hardware, and a Commander 337-cu.in. straight-eight engine.
He and Hunt then took the lot over to Indianapolis-based Herman Rigling, who built one of his Indy chassis around the components and slid it under a Pop Dreyer-built aluminum body. Somebody - most likely Hunt - spent the time massaging the nine-main-bearing straight-eight with a 6.5:1 compression ratio aluminum cylinder head, four Studebaker truck carburetors, a Scintilla magneto, and a reground camshaft to bump the stock engine's output from 110 to 175 horsepower.
They built the car according to the so-called "junk formula" template that Eddie Rickenbacker initiated for the 1930 Indy 500. Over the prior 20 years, the race entries had grown ever more exotic, expensive, and removed from the vehicles that carmakers offered. In an attempt to lure those carmakers back to supporting Indy, Rickenbacker increased allowable engine displacement from 91.5 cubic inches to 366 cubic inches for heavier, naturally aspirated four-stroke engine-vehicle combinations and re-instituted the riding mechanic.
Jenkins's illness forced him and Hunt to find another driver, Indy veteran Tony Gulotta, who qualified in the No. 37 car at 111 MPH. Along with riding mechanic Carl Riscigno, Gulotta turned in a spectacular performance. While they started in the middle of the pack, according to The Old Motor, Guletta was given the signal to run flat our with 80 laps to go then "passed 18 cars in the next 46 laps and was running in first place when he hit a patch of oil left over from a crash, and went into the wall ending its run." The two men walked away unscathed and Gulotta was credited with 18th place.
Hunt took the car straight back to South Bend to repair it before entering it - still wearing No. 37 - in that year's Pikes Peak hillclimb. While White makes mention of Jenkins's involvement in the car throughout this period, Pikes Peak records list the car as the Hunt Special and another driver, Chuck Myers, drove the car in the event. Myers did well too, beating out Jerry Unser and Glen Shultz with a time of 17 minutes, 10.3 seconds, good enough for an overall win and a course record.'
thanks to Hemming's Motor News.
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1930's view of the Indianapolis Traction Terminal. Scan of a B&W print in my collection, photographer unknown.