Big Four Route (CCC&StL): Map, History

Last revised: September 10, 2026

The Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railway—the Big Four Route—was New York Central’s Ohio Valley and St. Louis web. The nickname is the four cities in the title, not Collis Huntington’s Central Pacific partners. It was formed on June 30, 1889, from the Bee Line (Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati & Indianapolis), Melville Ingalls’s first Big Four (Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis & Chicago), and the Indianapolis & St. Louis. At its largest it approached 2,400 route miles across Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and into Louisville and East St. Louis. New York Central leased it for 99 years on February 1, 1930. The corporate shell lasted until Penn Central and Conrail.

New York Central 2-8-2 1504 sublettered Big Four at East Alton Illinois circa 1950 Fred Byerly

New York Central 2-8-2 No. 1504, sublettered for the Big Four, at East Alton, Illinois, circa 1950. Built by Alco in 1913 as No. 6004, Class H-5I, rebuilt from a Class G Consolidation. Scrapped 1953. Fred Byerly photo. American-Rails.com collection.

On this page: At a glance · Bee Line · Ingalls’s first Big Four · June 30, 1889 · Additions · Vanderbilt to the 1930 lease · Named trains · Maps, 1910 and 1930 · Penn Central and Conrail · What still runs

At a glance

Item	Detail
Legal name	Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railway
Nickname	Big Four Route. The four cities in the title
Headquarters	Cincinnati under Melville Ingalls. Later Indianapolis (Chesapeake Building). Operations centralized toward Cleveland and New York after the 1930 lease
States served	Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan; Kentucky (Louisville); Missouri (East St. Louis / St. Louis gateway)
Genesis	Cleveland, Columbus & Cincinnati Railroad, chartered March 14, 1836
Bee Line	Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati & Indianapolis, May 16, 1868 (CC&C + Bellefontaine Railway)
First Big Four	Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis & Chicago, 1880. Melville E. Ingalls, president
CCC&StL formed	June 30, 1889. Accounts from July 1. Bee Line + first Big Four + Indianapolis & St. Louis
Route miles	About 641 owned at consolidation (1889). About 2,391 (1925). About 2,400 (1930)
Track gauge	4 ft 8½ in. Early Ohio pieces had been 4 ft 10 in
NYC control	Vanderbilt directors from 1889. Stock control about 1905–06. 99-year lease February 1, 1930 (ICC authorization July 1929)
Principal divisions, 1930	Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Chicago, Sandusky, Michigan, Cairo, Peoria & Eastern, Whitewater
Successor	New York Central (lease 1930). Penn Central 1968. Conrail 1976. CSX and Norfolk Southern after 1999

Mileage follows the 1889 directors’ statement, the 1925 ICC year, and the 1930 Official Guide map on this page. Information compiled September 10, 2026.

The Bee Line

Ohio chartered the Cleveland, Columbus & Cincinnati Railroad on March 14, 1836. The charter sat dormant. The legislature revived it on March 12, 1845, and construction finally started in 1847 under Alfred Kelley. The road never built its own line to Cincinnati. What it built was Cleveland to Columbus, 138 miles, through Galion and Delaware, on Ohio’s 4-foot-10-inch gauge.

The last spike went in on February 18, 1851. An excursion with the legislature ran Columbus to Cleveland on February 21. Regular business followed that April. Through cars to Cincinnati used the Columbus & Xenia (open 1850) and the Little Miami. That combination, not a CC&C rail to the Ohio River, is how Cleveland first reached Cincinnati by train.

West from Galion, two 1848 companies intended a Cleveland–Indianapolis line: the Indianapolis & Bellefontaine, incorporated February 17, and the Bellefontaine & Indiana, February 25. Ohio built to the state line; Indiana built the rest. Through service Galion–Indianapolis was complete by 1853. The two merged in 1863 as the Bellefontaine Railway. The June 1868 Official Guide still called it the Bellefontaine Line: six trains Cleveland–Indianapolis. Crews shortened that to the B Line, then the Bee Line.

On May 16, 1868, the CC&C and the Bellefontaine Railway became the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati & Indianapolis Railway. That is the Bee Line the 1889 consolidation inherited: Cleveland–Columbus, Galion–Indianapolis, and a Delaware–Springfield branch. Vanderbilt money was already in the Bee Line before the second Big Four existed.

Ingalls’s first Big Four

The other half was a Cincinnati lawyer’s salvage job. Melville Ezra Ingalls, born in Harrison, Maine, in 1842, came west in 1870 for Boston clients who held the Indianapolis, Cincinnati & Lafayette. He took the presidency, then the receivership (1871 and again 1876), and kept the property alive on stockholder subscriptions.

On February 21, 1880 (some accounts print March 6), he folded the Cincinnati & Indiana, the Indianapolis, Cincinnati & Lafayette, and the Cincinnati, Lafayette & Chicago into the Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis & Chicago Railway. That was the original Big Four: Cincinnati to Indianapolis to Lafayette, and a connection with the Illinois Central at Kankakee for Chicago. Ingalls later built west to Seneca, Illinois, for a Rock Island haul into the city that avoided IC congestion. Collis Huntington sat on the board; the Chesapeake & Ohio was a friendly connection at Cincinnati. Ingalls himself later served as C&O president. That Huntington is not this railroad’s nickname.

June 30, 1889

The Vanderbilts wanted a St. Louis and Cincinnati map to match the Lake Shore and the Michigan Central into Chicago. Ingalls had the Cincinnati–Indianapolis–Chicago piece. The Bee Line had Cleveland–Columbus–Indianapolis. The Indianapolis & St. Louis filled Indianapolis–Terre Haute. The three companies consolidated as the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railway. The directors’ statement dated the merger June 17 in the filings and put operations on the books from July 1, 1889. American-Rails and the Central’s own later summaries use June 30, 1889.

Fifteen directors. Seven from New York, among them Cornelius Vanderbilt II, William K. Vanderbilt, Chauncey Depew, H. McK. Twombly, and J. P. Morgan. Five from Cincinnati. Ingalls became president. Capital was $20.5 million common and $1 million preferred. Mileage owned under the consolidation was only about 641. The rest of the 2,400-mile system was still to be leased, bought, or built.

What the Big Four added

Between 1889 and the early 1890s the map roughly tripled. The additions that mattered:

St. Louis, Alton & Terre Haute. Terre Haute & Alton, chartered January 1851, Terre Haute to Alton on March 1, 1856, then East St. Louis. Reorganized as the St. Louis, Alton & Terre Haute in 1862. The Big Four bought the main and branch in 1890 for $10 million of 4 percent bonds. That is the Indianapolis–St. Louis freight machine later Conrail and CSX kept.

Peoria & Eastern. Ohio’s first railroad, the Mad River & Lake Erie (chartered 1835, Sandusky toward Springfield), had passed through the Cincinnati, Sandusky & Cleveland (1866) and the Indiana, Bloomington & Western (1881). The IB&W failed in 1887 as the Ohio, Indiana & Western. Out of that came the Peoria & Eastern in 1890, Sandusky–Springfield–Indianapolis–Peoria country, operated for the Big Four. P&E lettering lasted on NYC cars into the diesel era. The company itself lasted until Conrail. The Mad River origin story is on the Ohio page.

The Egyptian Line. Cairo & Vincennes, organized 1867, finished Cairo–Vincennes–Danville in the early 1870s. Vanderbilt interests took it in 1884 as the Cairo, Vincennes & Chicago and put it under the new Big Four. Cairo, Illinois, gave the nickname. In the NYC years it moved Illinois coal. The line south of Vincennes / St. Francisville is gone.

Cincinnati Northern. Cincinnati, Van Wert & Michigan (1881) and Jackson & Ohio met at the Michigan line, merged in 1886 as the Cincinnati, Jackson & Mackinaw, and became the Cincinnati Northern in 1897. The Big Four took the stock in 1902: Franklin, Ohio, north to Jackson, Michigan.

Evansville, Indianapolis & Terre Haute. A Chicago & Eastern Illinois castoff, Evansville to Terre Haute, acquired in 1920.

Chicago itself was never a Big Four solo. Kankakee and the later Chicago, Indiana & Southern (open January 21, 1906, Danville toward East Chicago) gave the Central another path into the city. That CI&S piece, with the Cairo line, is what NYC men still called the Egyptian Line north of Danville.

Big Four Route Cleveland Cincinnati Chicago and St Louis system map 1910

Big Four Route system map, 1910. American-Rails.com collection.

Vanderbilt control, then a lease

The 1889 board was already a Vanderbilt board. It was not yet a New York Central merger. Ingalls ran the property from Cincinnati as a real railroad: shops at Beech Grove, a passenger plant into St. Louis, coal off the Egyptian Line, and the Bee Line as the Cleveland–Indianapolis stem. NYC stock control tightened about 1905–06. Ingalls stepped from the presidency to chairman of the board in 1905 and resigned that chair on November 14, 1912. He died at Hot Springs, Virginia, on July 11, 1914.

The Central still did not fold the company. Michigan Central and the Big Four were left as subsidiaries for the same reason the 1914 NYC merger left them out: bond terms and the cost of a full statutory combination. The Interstate Commerce Commission authorized a 99-year lease in July 1929. New York Central took the Big Four, and the Michigan Central, on February 1, 1930. After that the territory was the Central’s Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois operating region, still called the Big Four on employee maps. Some locomotives carried CCC&StL or Big Four sublettering into the 1950s—the East Alton Mikado on this page is one. Most of the Great Steel Fleet did not.

Named trains, as dates

The Big Four is how the Central reached Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and St. Louis without the Pennsylvania’s Panhandle. The varnish used that map. The Ohio State Limited was the New York–Cincinnati train, Cleveland and Columbus on the Bee Line, then south. The Southwestern Limited took the St. Louis side from 1889. The Knickerbocker was the secondary New York–St. Louis. Consists, streamlining, and the 1958 consolidations stay on those pages. This page only needs the fact that those names were Big Four trains in NYC lettering.

Big Four Route Cleveland Cincinnati Chicago and St Louis system map 1930

Big Four Route system map, 1930, the year New York Central took the 99-year lease. American-Rails.com collection.

Paper company to Conrail

After 1930 the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railway was a leased name with a board. It still owned property. Penn Central succeeded the lease on February 1, 1968. Conrail took what the United States Railway Association assigned on April 1, 1976, and the Big Four corporation went with the rest of the Central’s Midwest paper. NYC had already built the classification yard at Avon, Indiana, in the late 1950s to serve this map. That plant outlived the name.

What still runs

The through freight the Bee Line and the St. Louis, Alton & Terre Haute were built for is still a railroad. After the 1999 Conrail split:

CSX St. Louis Line. Indianapolis (Avon) to East St. Louis. The old Indianapolis & St. Louis / SLA&TH main. One of CSX’s Midwestern trunks
CSX Indianapolis Line and Ohio pieces. Bellefontaine–Indianapolis on the Bee Line, with Galion–Columbus and related Ohio segments still in CSX hands
CSX Indianapolis–Cincinnati. The old first-Big-Four Cincinnati–Indianapolis corridor, today the Indianapolis Subdivision toward Hamilton
Avon Yard. NYC’s Big Four Yard, late 1950s. Still a CSX hump and intermodal terminal west of Indianapolis
Amtrak Beech Grove. The former Big Four shops, sold by Penn Central in 1975, still overhaul passenger cars
Central Railroad of Indiana (CIND). Genesee & Wyoming. Cincinnati toward Shelbyville on a Big Four remnant Conrail sold in 1992

Amtrak’s Cardinal still uses the former Peoria & Eastern / Big Four between Indianapolis and Crawfordsville on its Chicago–Cincinnati routing. The Hoosier State over that same track ended in July 2019. This page does not invent a 2026 timetable.

Gone, or nearly so: the Egyptian Line south of Vincennes, most of the P&E west of Crawfordsville, the Springfield line in Indiana (Penn Central, 1976–77), and passenger into St. Louis Union Station on the Southwestern and Knickerbocker. The Big Four Bridge over the Ohio at Louisville keeps the name as a pedestrian span. It does not carry trains.

Norfolk Southern holds other former NYC in Ohio—the Lake Shore Chicago Line along the lake, not this web. The Big Four’s surviving mains are, with few exceptions, CSX.

Sources

Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway Company. Statement of the Directors … to the Stockholders, July 1, 1889. Consolidation of CISL&C, CCC&I, and Indianapolis & St. Louis; mileage owned 640.73; 323 locomotives
Official Guide of the Railways, January 1910 (vol. 42, no. 8), pp. 244–257. 1910 map on this page
Official Guide of the Railways, January 1930 (vol. 62, no. 8), p. 194. 1930 map and divisions on this page
Harlow, Alvin F. The Road of the Century. New York: Creative Age Press, 1947. Ch. 16: Ingalls, first Big Four 1880, June 1889 consolidation, Vanderbilt directors
Solomon, Brian, and Mike Schafer. New York Central Railroad. St. Paul: Andover Junction / MBI, 2007
Doughty, Geoffrey H. New York Central’s Great Steel Fleet, 1948–1967. Revised ed. Lynchburg: TLC, 1999. Ohio State Limited, Southwestern Limited, Knickerbocker
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University. CCC&I 1889 merger into CCC&StL; ICC 99-year lease authorization, July 1929
Trains / Classic Trains, “Remembering the New York Central System,” part 2. NYC leased Big Four and Michigan Central February 1, 1930; Ingalls; Cincinnati Northern 1902; EI&TH 1920
Cleveland, Columbus & Cincinnati: charter March 14, 1836; last spike February 18, 1851; excursion February 21, 1851; regular service April 1851. Merger with Bellefontaine Railway May 16, 1868, as CCC&I
Indianapolis & Bellefontaine, February 17, 1848; Bellefontaine & Indiana, February 25, 1848. Through Galion–Indianapolis 1853. Bellefontaine Railway 1863
Ingalls: president CISL&C 1880; president CCC&StL 1889–1905; chairman to November 14, 1912; died July 11, 1914
ICC / NYC lease: authorization July 1929; effective February 1, 1930. Penn Central February 1, 1968. Conrail April 1, 1976
1925 route-miles 2,391 (ICC year as commonly cited). About 2,400 in 1930 compilations
Fred Byerly, NYC 2-8-2 1504 (H-5I, ex-6004, Alco 1913), East Alton, Illinois, circa 1950

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