"BARNEY TRAIN" SAID TO BE DOOMED

Urbana Daily Courier March 7, 1905

Famous Decatur Train on Havana Line Will be Supplanted Soon

The Barney train on the Champaign and Havana line of the Central will be no more if present plans are carried out. All questions as to the immortality of Barney are practically settled, being subject to the approval of the general officers of the road, and there is but little doubt the plans will he approved.

Barney is to be made a plain freight train. The coaches will be taken off and the train will handle passengers no more, or will handle them only as a local freight does.

With the passing of Barney a new train will be put on the Champaign branch of the Illinois Central. It will be purely a passenger train and will furnish first-class accommodations. This train will leave Champaign at 7:43 in the morning and will arrive at Decatur at 9:20 a. m. Returning it will leave Decatur at 4:40 p. m. and will arrive at Champaign at 6:10 p. m., making connection there with No. 4 to Chicago.

The new service will furnish two passenger trains daily each way over the Champaign branch of the Illinois Central. It will afford the people living along that line vastly better facilities.

The passing of Barney will be an event in local railroad history. It. dates from the beginning of the Champaign line and took its name from Conductor Barney, who was in charge of it. The train made one round trip daily. and was the only train on the road. It necessarily carried both passengers and freight and was essentially an accommodation train. It stopped wherever any business offered. It stopped at cross roads as well as at stations and it is related of it that it would sometimes wait till some prospective patron's hens had completed an even dozen eggs. It was and is yet, for that matter, pretty uncertain about its time of arrival and departure. It is due to arrive in Decatur at 11 a. m., but it has the privilege of arriving two or more hours later. Still it is one of the best patronized trains running into Decatur.

Although Conductor Barney left the road many years ago the train has remained the Barney train to patrons along the line. Among railroad men it has come to be known as the "Hack Line." The "Gaffey Ann" is another name by which it was once known and is still called occasionally. The name, almost forgotten, was recalled by a witness in an inquest recently. It puzzled the coroner and railroad men for a time.