Left: AMTRAKS Hoosier State is racing towards Indianapolis splits the semaphores.    Nearly all of America’s semaphore signals are gone.   They had motors and mechanical moving parts, the bane of management.   Newer models have LEDs  and other gizmo’s and are driven by computer chip  technology.   So capture those digital images soon folks.

This line is the former  MONON,    officially named the Chicago, Indianapolis and Louisville Railroad, how dull.   No wonder they used the Potawatomi Indian word meaning “tote” or “swift running.”    The Monon rails connected Chicago with Indianapolis, and Michigan City and Louisville, forming a big “X.”   The City of Monon marks the “X.”  Indiana claimed the railroad as its own,  calling it the Hoosier Line.

Someone even coined a poem:  Up and Down the Monon, everything is fine, cause that root’n, toot’n Monon, she’s a Hoosier Line!  What I miss about the semaphores is that as a railfan trekking around the country you could see the position of the semaphore from adjacent highways.    The color indicator was not pertinent.    If they were pointing toward the sky, tracks were clear.   If one was horizontal there was traffic nearby, either coming  or going.

(Now maybe one of you can tell me why one semaphore is pointed, and the other squared ??   Really, I don’t know.)  The photo was captured by my friend and videographer Tim Lab of Owosso, Michigan.  MONON rails have morphed via mergers into today’s CSX Transportation.