This railroad line was originally chartered by Chauncey Rose as the Terre Haute and Richmond Railroad in 1847, with the segment from Terre Haute to Indianapolis being completed in 1851 and the first train running in January 1852. It went through a series of name changes before ending up the Terre Haute & Indianapolis Railroad, and appears to have been sold to the PRR in 1893 and incorporated under the Vandalia name.
When the PRR merged with NYC in 1968 to form Penn Central, they elected to keep the NYC's own double-tracked line between Terre Haute and Indianapolis, abandoning the PRR corridor.
Today, the Terre Haute end of the right-of-way serves as the National Road Heritage Trail, along which remains many artifacts of the former railroad line, as seen in the pictures.