Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Chicago Railway

The Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Chicago Railway was a railroad in the United States that operated from 1867 to 1889 across Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. It took its final form in 1880 through the reorganization of the financially troubled Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Lafayette Railroad, itself the product of an 1867 consolidation of three earlier lines, the Indianapolis and Cincinnati Railroad of 1850, the Lafayette and Indianapolis Railroad of 1846, and the Cincinnati and Indiana Railroad of 1861. The company ran a line from Cincinnati through Indianapolis to Lafayette and controlled subsidiary operations including the Cincinnati, Lafayette and Chicago Railroad and the Columbus, Hope and Greensburg Railroad. In 1889 it merged with two other railways to form the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway, popularly called the Big Four, which later became one of the predecessors of the New York Central Railroad. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/