Connersville, IN (COI)

Ticket Revenue

FY 2011

$29,911

Station Ridership

FY 2011

532

Note: Fiscal year is from
October through September.

The Amtrak station at Connersville is a brick shelter on the platform, constructed in with funds raised volunteers of the local Rotary Club. The original brick station building, still standing nearby, was built in 1914 for the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad (CH&D) and is used to support freight train operations.

The station building sharing a platform with the Amtrak stop was built only three years before the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton was purchased by the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad at auction. The station is now used by CSX, the successor to the B&O. By 1891, Connersville was a local stop on both the CH&D and the Big Four (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis, later New York Central) a few blocks to the southeast.

The portion of Indiana where Connersville lies was one of the areas the Native Americans we know as the “Mound Builders” lived. They are called such for the distinctive mounds they constructed roughly 5,000 years ago, as well as the many metal and pottery artifacts left behind in mounds across Indiana and Ohio. However, by the time European-descended Americans reached this forested land, the nomadic Miami, Shawnee and Potawatomi inhabited the area.

John and William Conner, their wives and a group of Delaware Indians, moved from their family farm near Detroit to the bluffs on the western side of the fork of the Whitewater River in 1808. John Conner worked as a fur trader, a lucrative employment at that time. In 1813 he was able to plat a small village which became Connersville. He later served in the Indiana state senate.

The Whitewater Canal passed through Connersville, then a log-trading town. The canal was prone to both flooding and drought, so the residents petitioned for the towpath right-of-way to be otherwise used. The first railroad reached Connersville in 1861, and by 1867, the original Whitewater Valley Railroad, which ran along the Whitewater tow path, came through Connersville.

In 1859 the Root brothers came to Connersville to open their facility for the manufacturing of rotary positive blowers, used in engine superchargers, which they patented in 1860. The blowers were originally used in blast furnaces. In 1900, Gottlieb Daimler included a Roots-style supercharger in a patented engine design, making the Roots-type supercharger the oldest of the various designs now available. The design has been in use in automobile engines since, such as in the Shelby Mustang. At one point, Connersville became known as “Little Detroit” for the early automobiles manufactured there: Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg, Ansted, Empire, Lexington and McFarlan.

A short distance from the Amtrak stop sits a passenger station for the reestablished Whitewater Valley Railroad (WWVRR), which was formed in 1972 as a not-for-profit heritage railroad. It has been running weekend excursions between Connersville and Metamora and slightly further south on a remnant of the New York Central (NYC) railroad to view the historical Whitewater River canal locks and docks. The WWVR operates historically significant diesel locomotives and coaches from NYC lines. It is completely volunteer-operated. The trains operate from a station financed by the city and constructed by volunteers in 2000 along historical lines on the foundation of the previous freight depot. Grand Street, which runs behind the WWVRR station, was once the Whitewater Valley Canal itself. The passenger station for NYC originally stood across the street; it was torn down after NYC discontinued passenger operations on the route in 1933.

While Indiana is known for its basketball, Connersville has been home to the annual MudFest since 1987, where the Connersville/Fayette County Chamber of Commerce sponsors a tournament of over 100 volleyball teams playing in special mud courts. The event raises funds for the city Parks Department.

Amtrak does not provide ticketing or help with baggage at the Connersville station.

Connersville is served by tri-weekly train service.