The east–west road: the Baltimore & Ohio, now CSX's Garrett Subdivision

1873–2026 · built 1873; through service 1874; passenger service ended 30 April 1971

The second railroad crossed the first eighteen years after the town was platted: the Baltimore, Pittsburgh & Chicago Railway built east–west through Walkerton in 1873, through service followed in 1874, and from 1876 the line ran as the Baltimore and Ohio and Chicago Railroad — the Baltimore & Ohio's Chicago main line in everything but the parent company's name (the Story of Walkerton section leg carries the succession). Chapman counted two depots standing in Walkerton in 1880, one for each road, in a town of two saloons and no bank. The depot-era railroad employed the town's most famous son before he was famous: Harold C. Urey worked for the B&O in Walkerton in his youth — his profile is People's; the job is noted here because it is this line's own record of what a depot town's railroad meant to a farm boy two miles out.

The B&O's course ran through the Chessie System years into CSX, and the line through Walkerton is today CSX's Garrett Subdivision — double track, dispatched from Jacksonville, Florida, the surviving main line of the town's three railroads. Its passenger course ended on a date the whole system shares: 30 April 1971, when the Capitol Limited was discontinued and B&O passenger service ended with the coming of Amtrak. Amtrak nevertheless brought passenger trains back over this line for fifteen years without, so far as the record reached shows, bringing back a Walkerton stop: the Broadway Limited was rerouted over the B&O on 10 November 1990 — its Indiana stops on that routing included Nappanee and Garrett — and was replaced by the Three Rivers on 10 September 1995; the Three Rivers was discontinued on 7–8 March 2005. Whether the 1990–95 Broadway ever stopped at Walkerton is a named gap below; its settler is Amtrak's national timetable for the fall of 1990. What is established is the shape: trains passed through Walkerton from 1990 to 2005, and no stop here appears in the record reached.

Sources:

1. The Story of Walkerton section leg of this build (the Baltimore, Pittsburgh & Chicago build of 1873; the Baltimore and Ohio and Chicago Railroad from 1876; Chapman's two depots, 1880).
2. The trainorders.com photographic essay on the Walkerton diamonds and KN Tower, 22 April 2020 (the Garrett Subdivision today; Urey's B&O employment in his youth).
3. The Garrett, Indiana station record (the Capitol Limited's discontinuance, 30 April 1971, ending B&O passenger service).
4. Trainweb and timetables.org Amtrak records (the Broadway Limited's reroute over the B&O, 10 November 1990, with Nappanee and Garrett among its Indiana stops; the Three Rivers, 10 September 1995 – March 2005).