Railroad that sort of didn't/did happen

 

The yellow line is the proposed route, so far as we can tell.

A railroad history expert says that in 1854, a rail line was being proposed from Hamilton, Ohio, across Bath Township to Roseburg, on north to Cambridge City and eventually Chicago. According to him, the line was to cross the state line a little north of Reilly, go through an area between Old and New Bath, and cross the river somewhere around Brownsville.

This rail line was platted and land evidently secured somewhere near Billingsville, although that's where most of the story ends. It's likely the plan was dropped for financial reasons and inevitably because of the civil war.

There was very little industrial population in Indiana until 1880, so the rail line would not have served many people. Most likely it was just rich people thinking they could manipulate land values. Railroads were always fond of doing that.

But we didn't get our canal either.

 Learning more about the almost-railroad through Jersey toward Roseburg. Sometime after 1858, the C&O modified its plan and decided to make the short line cross into Indiana at Peoria in Springfield Twp., where it had a grain stop in Raymond and on to a grain stop on the toll pike from Colter's Corner to Oxford. That grain stop eventually became the town of Bath. A post office was supposed to be put there but the government accidentally put it in Colter's Corner and in fixing their mistake, just changed the town to Old Bath, which then created New Bath.

The rail line went north, instead of northwest, through Cottage Grove and finally a little grain stop in Harrison Township owned by a guy named Kitchel. The train then went on to Richmond, etc.

The line had been platted in 1858, according to Reifel's history, and was put on hold until the Civil War was over and the railroad building boom made for an amazing industry. Evidently, and we can't prove this, the C&O through Bath and Kitchel was originally supposed to cut northwest through Roseburg and on past Brownsville and Connersville toward Cambridge City and thence to Chicago.

It obviously made sense to go straight north instead and connect elsewhere than to build a rail bridge across the East Fork north of Dunlapsville. Still, that's speculation.

Reifel concludes in the 1915 history that the land for the railroad out of Billingsville was surveyed and partially graded. The work stopped for reasons not clear -- it was probably financial. When the war started, manpower shortages doomed it.

But it was eventually built and New Bath prospered. It also has its own post office now. Colter's Corner remains just Old.

BATH AND STORIES ABOUT IT.

The above map shows the rail line. Find Cottage Grove. It's just west of there.

Cclips from the 1867 Brookville American showed an advocacy for a railroad from Ohio across through Fairfield, and to points north.  As of April 1868, people in Richmond were still bellyaching that the railroad wasn't interested in this. Turns out, they were partly right. 

In truth, some people really were interested and in the early 1870s, a line was completed from Richmond north to Fort Wayne through the town of Winchester. The towns financed their own chunk of the work through stock sales and other nefarious methods. The Cincinnati connection was completed in an alternate way around Eaton, Ohio. More or less. 

The East Fork never got railroaded, which would not have made a difference. A lot of the track between Richmond and Fort Wayne was abandoned. Most likely, people ride bikes there and never give a second thought to Fairfield.

Which was what the Cincinnati-Richmond-Fort Wayne Railroad did.

RAILROAD PANIC 1873 (OUR SIDE OF IT)