28 April 1941. The New York Central inaugurates a new passenger train to connect Chicago, Lafayette, Indianapolis and Cincinnati. That train was given the name “James Whitcomb Riley.” The equipment used on the new train had recently been completed at Beech Grove, the shop facilities of the New York Central. The railroad decided that the Hoosier poet was an appropriate name for a route that would use the latest in streamlined equipment.
The “press run” of the Riley was made on 23 April 1941. Leaving Chicago mid-morning, it arrived in Indianapolis at 1130. With the exception of slowing down at Shelbyville, Greensburg, and Batesville, the train didn’t stop between Indianapolis and Cincinnati. The return to Indianapolis was provided by the “Sycamore,” another modern Big Four route without the streamlining of the Riley. The Riley would start service five days later, leaving Cincinnati in the morning, and returning that evening.
Fast forward to 1974. The owner of the James Whitcomb Riley has transferred from the New York Central to the Penn Central, the merger of the two rival northeastern railroads, the Pennsylvania and the New York Central. The Penn Central had fallen on the hard times such a mammoth merger was supposed to prevent. Created in 1968, the Penn Central fell into bankruptcy in 1971. And it was still suffering from that status is 1974. So much so that the James Whitcomb Riley passenger service, which had fallen into the hands of the government owned Amtrak, had to be rerouted, removing Lafayette from its list of stops.
25 September 1974, and the James Whitcomb Riley, long a staple on Penn Central tracks, had been moved to use Chesapeake & Ohio tracks via Richmond, Muncie, Marion and Peru. This was due to the tracks of the Penn Central being declared unsafe (see “1974: Penn Central Emergency Repairs Close Major RR Link“) This new routing took the train out of Indianapolis, which had been a major stop since it was created.
The “temporary” reroute of the train that carried passengers from Chicago to Washington, DC, was supposed to have existed for 12 days. That was announced on 4 August 1974. Even then, the service was to just travel through the cities along the C&O tracks, not stop. That would change six weeks later when stops along the “temporary” route would commence at Richmond, Muncie, Marion and Peru. During the shutdown of the Penn Central tracks, Amtrak took its passengers by bus to Cincinnati for those going eastbound. Westbound passengers, heading to Chicago, would take the bus the entire way.
28 August 1977. The announcement was made by Amtrak that the James Whitcomb Riley, by then a staple of the C&O tracks through Indiana, would lose its name on 30 October of the same year. At one point, after the takeover of passenger service by Amtrak, the train actually had two names – Riley and George Washington. The Washington name confused passengers, so the Riley name was restored to both trains. The train’s new name would be “Cardinal.”
Amtrak stated several reasons for the name change. First, the fact that outside Indiana, people weren’t as familiar with the poet, hence James Whitcomb Riley had very little meaning outside of the Hoosier state.
Second, Amtrak felt that the name was too long and hard to remember. And third, improvements in the schedule and equipment gave Amtrak officials the feeling a new name was in order.
As far as service to Lafayette and Indianapolis, Amtrak was, at the time, still in the midst of a lawsuit with the bankrupt, and almost non-existent, Penn Central to get help to rebuild the original route of the Riley. By 1977, there was little but a shell left of the old Penn Central. Most routes of the old company had been absorbed by the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) on 1 April 1976. Anything that still belonged to Penn Central were those lines that Conrail didn’t want. The old line that the Riley used between Indianapolis and Lafayette had been abandoned by the Penn Central officially in 1976, at least between Zionsville and Lebanon, Docket number USRA (574). The old Lafayette line never made it to Conrail, as that company decided to use the PRR’s Frankfort line to Lebanon.
Amtrak voted to cut the service of the Cardinal completely in 1981. But key members of Congress, including the chairmen of the Amtrak appropriations committee, were against the idea. Service along the route would be ended on 1 October 1981. However, in December of the same year, Congress approved special legislation to reinstate to Cardinal, starting on 8 January 1982. The change, however, is that the service would be three times a week, instead of daily as it had been before. The train would run Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Service was also expanded to include New York, via Washington DC.
The Cardinal would still be running the route through Richmond, Muncie, Marion and Peru into the 1980s. In 1984, Amtrak decided to change the schedule of the train, with most stops of the three times a week train being late night and very early morning. This completely flipped the schedule that was in place, having an early morning Chicago departure, and an arrival in the early evening.
Cardinal service would be restored to Indianapolis and Lafayette in May 1986 when the train took over the route of the Hoosier State, which had connected Indianapolis to Chicago via Lafayette. The schedule of the Cardinal was: eastbound on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays; with westbound travelers on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
Indiana Transportation History 