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This is the history of a railroad and its part in the development of
Indiana. It is the story of men and women who built and operated the Jeffersonville,
Madison, and Indianapolis Railroad, which eventually became part of the
Pennsylvania Railroad. The map shows the lines of the JM&I operated
by the PRR in 1952.
Lines of the JM&I Railroad in Southern
Indiana 
The JM&I was an unusual railroad. The predecessor Madison railroad
built the line from Madison to Indianapolis that was the first railroad
in Indiana and the fifth to begin operations west of the Appalachian Mountains.
The line down from the high bluffs to Madison, Indiana, on the Ohio River
was (and still is) the steepest standard gauge railroad grade in the United
States. The Madison railroad was one of the founding companies of the
Indianapolis Union Railway, which built and operated the first railroad
union station in the United States. It was one of the first U.S. railroads
to lay iron “T” rail instead of the dangerous and weak strap
rail on wooden stringers used to build many other early American railroads.
In the late 19th century, the JM&I owned and operated three lines.
Its main line ran from Louisville, Kentucky, 111 miles north to Indianapolis,
via Seymour and Columbus. A branch line – the earliest line to be
built – ran from Columbus 45 miles to Madison. Another branch line
ran from Columbus 63 miles to Shelbyville, Rushville, and Cambridge City.
Earlier, tracks of JM&I predecessors and their leased lines reached
from Edinburg to Shelbyville, Shelbyville to Knightstown, Franklin to
Martinsville, and for a few months from Indianapolis to Kokomo. Once a
line was even proposed from Columbus west through Nashville to Bloomington,
but lack of financing kept it from being built.
In 2004 the line from Louisville through Seymour and Columbus to Indianapolis
was operated by the Louisville and Indiana Railroad Company and owned
by the Anacostia and Pacific Company. That portion of the Columbus-Madison
line between North Vernon and Madison was operated by the Madison Railroad
and owned by the City of Madison Port Authority. The other lines were
all abandoned and removed.
The JM&I had some unique characteristics, unusual habits, and its
share of interesting personalities. The men and women successfully achieved
pioneering feats of engineering and locomotive design. In times of war
they undertook to move record numbers of trains loaded with troops and
war materiel. At various times in its history, locomotive engineers drove
their engines through the night not knowing if the Reno brothers would
pull another train robbery, whether the bridge ahead might be out, or
that an opposing train was in the clear in the siding around the next
curve. Train crews lived a lifetime in moments as their train plunged
down the steep Madison Hill out of control. The JM&I had its share
of head-on “cornfield meets” and rear end collisions, floods,
and washed out track. There was a pioneer spirit among JM&I men and
women that had its roots in the pioneer spirit of the settlers of the
Northwest Territory of the United States, from which the state of Indiana
had been formed in 1816.
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