Wabash Railroad

Reporting mark	WAB
Locale	Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, and Ontario
Dates of operation	1877–October 16, 1964
Successor	Norfolk and Western Railway
Track gauge	4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) (standard gauge)
Headquarters	St. Louis, MO
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System timetable, 1887

1886 system map

The Wabash Railroad (reporting mark WAB) was a Class I railroad that operated in the mid-central United States. It served a large area, including trackage in the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri and Ontario. Its primary connections included Chicago, Illinois, Kansas City, Missouri, Detroit, Michigan, Buffalo, New York, St. Louis, Missouri, and Toledo, Ohio. The Wabash's major freight traffic advantage was the direct line from Kansas City to Detroit, without going through St. Louis or Chicago.

Naming

The name Wabash Railroad or Wabash Railway may refer to various corporate entities formed over the years using one or the other of these two names. The first railroad to use only Wabash and no other city in its name was the Wabash Railway in January 1877 which was a rename of the Toledo, Wabash and Western Railway formed on July 1, 1865.

The source of the Wabash name was the Wabash River, a 475-mile (764 km)-long river in the eastern United States that flows southwest from northwest Ohio near Fort Recovery, Ohio across northern Indiana to Illinois where it forms the southern Illinois-Indiana border before draining into the Ohio River, of which it is the largest northern tributary. The name "Wabash" is an English spelling of the French name for the river, "Ouabache." French traders named the river after the Miami Indian word for the river.

The identity of the Wabash Railroad name disappeared beginning in 1964 when the Norfolk and Western Railway leased the Wabash System. Both eventually became a portion of the large Norfolk Southern system.

Toledo, Wabash and Western Railway (1865)

This predecessor of the Wabash System had the Northern Cross Railway as its earliest portion which was the first railroad built in Illinois. The Toledo and Illinois Railroad was chartered April 20, 1853 in Ohio to build from Toledo on Lake Erie west to the Indiana state line. The Lake Erie, Wabash and St. Louis Railroad was chartered in Indiana on August 19 to continue the line west through Wabash into Illinois towards St. Louis, Missouri, and the two companies merged August 4, 1856 to form the Toledo, Wabash and Western Railroad with a total length of 243 miles.

The company soon went bankrupt and was sold at foreclosure  The Toledo and Wabash Railroad was chartered October 7, 1858 and acquired the Ohio portion October 8. The Wabash and Western Railroad was chartered on September 27 and acquired the Indiana portion on October 5 On December 15, the two companies merged as the Toledo and Wabash Railway. That company merged with the Great Western Railway of Illinois, the Illinois and Southern Iowa Railroad, the Quincy and Toledo Railroad and the Warsaw and Peoria Railroad to form the final Toledo, Wabash and Western Railway. It was this group of railroads that formed the beginning of the Wabash System with the rename in 1877.

The Wabash System

Later mergers and reorganizations formed the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway on November 7, 1879, and Wabash Railroad on August 1, 1889. Financier John Whitfield Bunn was one of several capitalists who were instrumental in the consolidation of the Wabash System.

In 1904, the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway was formed and acquired control of the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad, giving the Wabash access to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as the final step in an attempt to break the near-monopoly of the Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central Railroad for traffic to the east. However, the Wabash had overextended itself, and the WPT went bankrupt in 1908; it would later become part of the Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway. The Wabash Railroad itself was sold at foreclosure July 21, 1915 and reorganized October 22 as the Wabash Railway.

The Pennsylvania Railroad acquired loose control of the Wabash in 1927 by buying stock through its Pennsylvania Company. In 1929 the Interstate Commerce Commission charged the PRR with violating the Clayton Antitrust Act. The ruling was appealed, and in 1933 the Circuit Court ruled that the control was for investment only and did not violate the act.

1887