>The Wab took over the trackage south of town (???). The Wab &
>IaC/M&StL shared a depot and freight house of the SE side of Albia. The
>brick Freight House still stands, and I believe the foundation for the
?depot is still visible.
The Centerville, Moravia & Albia (the rail line connecting the three towns
named in its corporate title) had quite a history - passing in a relatively
short time from the Wabash to independent to the Iowa Central (before that
road's merger into the M&StL in 1912) to independent again to
electrification. Given the later interrelationship of the Wabash's Des
Moines line to the CB&Q, I hope I can be permitted to explain this rather
complicated part of Wabash history and how the CM&A fits in:
The timeline cited in Doug's message is thus is a little backwards - the
Wabash interests had built and operated the CM&A from the time of
construction in 1880 as a continuation/branch of the Missouri, Iowa &
Northern, as part of a through route St. Louis to Des Moines, thus that part
of the Wabash would have looked like this prior to 1899:
St. Louis - Glenwood Jct. MO - Wabash
Glenwood Jct.- Centerville IA - MI&N
Centerville - Albia - CM&A
Albia - Des Moines - DM & StL
The Wabash lost control of the MI&N (which went to the K&W, later the CB&Q),
after which with the CM&A would have been disconnected from the Wabash
system on the south in 1884 - thus the Wabash got to Des Moines this way:
St. Louis - Glenwood Jct. MO - Wabash
Glenwood Jct. Mo - Ottumwa - Wabash (Cedar Rapids & St. Louis previously)
Ottumwa - Harvey - Rock Island trackage rights (via two connecting RI lines)
Harvey - Des Moines - Wabash (DM & StL previously)
-- Harvey to Albia was operated as a branch
While the Wabash was using this routing, the CM&A was cast off - functioning
on its own for about five years, ending up in the camp of the Iowa Central
in 1890. The IaC had wanted it to as a head start to build south to St.
Louis on their own, but as stated earlier that got nowhere, so they unloaded
the line in 1910.
In 1899, the Wabash constructed a new route to reconnect their system to the
south directly to Albia, which came off the Ottumwa line at Moulton. This
new route was parallel to the CM&A from Moravia to Albia. Complicating this
was the reuse of some of the right-of-way of a CB&Q line abandoned 10 years
earlier that had gone from Albia south to Moravia. The Iowa Central had a
branch south of Albia to a coal mine (unrelated to the CM&A), also utilizing
some of the abandoned Moravia CB&Q right of way
The Wabash would have looked like this post 1899
St. Louis - Glenwood Jct. MO - Wabash
Glenwood Jct. Mo - Moulton - Wabash (previously CR & StL)
Moulton - Albia - Moulton, Albia & Des Moines (to Wabash)
Albia - Des Moines - Wabash (DM & StL previously)
To get the complete story, this had to be pieced together from three
different Palimpsest articles - M&StL in Jul '51, Interurbans in Iowa in May
'54 and Wabash in Iowa, Oct '64.
Part of the Albia M&StL/WAB depot was until very recently owned by the
school district, and was used for storage - this would have been located at
the foot of Washington Street, east of 7th St.
N. L. Pitsch
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