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1947–1956 · THE SECOND ELEVATION
The barrier: What the Pennsylvania's elevation did for the south, the Nickel Plate's street-level tracks undid for the north. The Nickel Plate ran the length of the city between Columbia and Superior streets at grade — thirty-two trains a day in the Cityscapes account, bottling up downtown traffic for miles and holding back the development of everything north of the river. The board of works proposed elevating the Nickel Plate as early as 1923. Nothing happened for twenty-four years. A 1946 plan to avoid the whole problem by rerouting the Nickel Plate onto the already-elevated Pennsylvania tracks, as part of a Union Station scheme, was promoted and defeated; the decision was made to elevate the Nickel Plate where it lay.
The project: In 1947 Mayor Harry Baals signed the agreement with the railroad to elevate the tracks at seven crossings. Bonds were issued in 1953, and on 14 December 1953 — the marker dates the groundbreaking to 15 December — the mayor turned the first shovel of dirt at Ewing Street for what was then an $8 million project. Temporary tracks were laid; construction of the elevation itself began on 27 August 1954. The two-mile elevation carried the double-tracked Nickel Plate over seven downtown streets, from Coombs Street to Fairfield Avenue, and its building obliterated most of the remaining traces downtown of the Wabash and Erie Canal, on whose very route the Nickel Plate had been laid in 1882. The old Superior Street depot closed — a new elevated passenger station replaced it — and on 4 October 1955 the elevation was dedicated, with one of the two tracks laid and trains running: the first train over the new elevation was hauled by Nickel Plate Berkshire No. 767, a fact the city remembered when, eight years later, it asked for that engine for Lawton Park — the story the 765 entry below untangles. Total completion came in 1956 — the railroad's marker gives 29 July 1956 — at a final cost of about $9 million, borne 40 percent by the city, 40 percent by Allen County and 20 percent by the railroad.
The result: Contemporaries hailed the elevation as the greatest improvement to the city in half a century, and the geography bore them out: with the barrier lifted, Fort Wayne's growth poured north of the river, past the new suburbs toward Glenbrook, in the expansion the Current section maps. The elevated Nickel Plate is Norfolk Southern's line today, and its long concrete viaduct across the north edge of downtown is the most visible monument of the railroad age the city still uses every day.
Sources: ACGSI Nickel Plate Railroad page, from the Nickel Plate Railroad marker on Barr Street — the 1947 Baals agreement, groundbreaking December 1953, construction begun 27 August 1954, completion 29 July 1956; Kevin Leininger, "Traffic on right tracks," News-Sentinel Cityscapes (1982) — the thirty-two trains a day, the 1923 board of works proposal, the seven crossings, bonds issued 1953 and work begun 15 December 1953, the dedication of 4 October 1955, the $9 million final cost divided 40/40/20, the closing of the Superior Street depot and the canal traces obliterated; Michael Hawfield, News-Sentinel — the defeated 1946 rerouting alternative and the "greatest improvement in half a century" verdict.