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THE TRANSPORT TRILOGY, SECOND BEAT — THE JUNCTION
The second railroad made the town: Chapman's Lincoln chapter dates it in one line — in 1873 the Baltimore & Ohio was built, crossing the Indianapolis, Peru & Chicago at West Troy (Chapman, pp. 733–735). The corporate record refines the year without contradicting the season: the road was built by the Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Chicago Railway (1872–1876 in the Indiana railroad list), and the through service between the East and Chicago over the completed line opened in 1874; the successor company from 1876 was the Baltimore and Ohio and Chicago Railroad. Construction on this ground in 1873, through trains in 1874 — both datings print, construction against opening, and the Trains leg owns the road's first-hand corporate record. The crossing is the town's economic fact: from 1873–74 Walkerton was not a station on one line but a junction of two — the north–south road to Indianapolis and Michigan City, and the east–west road binding Washington and Baltimore to Chicago. Chapman counted the result in 1880: two depots stood in the town (p. 734). Howard sums the pair's county work in his railroad chapter: what the Lake Shore, the Michigan Central and the Grand Trunk did for the county's north, "was done for Walkerton and the southwest part of the county by the building of… the Lake Erie & Western railroad… and also the Baltimore & Ohio road, connecting Washington City, Baltimore and other eastern points with Chicago" (Howard, p. 240). The B&O's line through Walkerton descends through the Chessie System to CSX Transportation, on whose Garrett Subdivision freights still run through the town — the 2004 photographic record of the crossings shows CSX trains at work on it (monon.org, Kankakee Belt photo record). Of the town's three railroads, the B&O's successor is the one whose crossing never slept. The full corporate course is Trains'.