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1871 TO 1934, AND THE VERDICTS
The test the brief requires is a real one, because two more lines ran north out of South Bend within two miles of this frame's western edge, and local memory easily promotes them into Granger lines. They were not. The Michigan Central's South Bend branch came first: the Central's "Air Line" reached Niles from Jackson in 1870, and the branch from Niles to South Bend — twelve miles, with the single intermediate station at Bertrand, Michigan, on the 1901–02 state manual's list — opened in the same construction era, 1871. Its Indiana course ran down the east bank of the St. Joseph River through Clay Township's western tier, past the frontages of St. Mary's College and Notre Dame — the later spur to the university's power plant crossed St. Mary's front lawn along Douglas Road — to a South Bend terminus at the Singer works on East Madison Street. That is Clay Township ground, but it is the river corridor, west of the census place at every point: the branch never entered the frame. Its own end is documented at the same strength: the line north of the university spur was abandoned in stages, the remnant — 3.7 miles, latterly the university's own "Notre Dame and Western" — last saw rail service in 1995, and the Surface Transportation Board approved its abandonment in April 2012, after which the track was scrapped for the trail its owners wanted.
The interurban ran the same western corridor a generation later, and it is the line the brief names: the interurbans were South Bend's, Mishawaka's and Niles's — did any reach this ground? The northern line was the South Bend and Southern Michigan Railway, consolidated in 1906 with the Niles and Buchanan Railway as the Southern Michigan Railway and known by its own billing as the "Fruit Belt Route." The Central Electric Railfans' Association's record, compiled from the company's own material, dates the operation precisely: cars ran "as far out of South Bend as Niles on August 3, 1903, and thru to St. Joseph on May 16, 1906" — the contemporary Berrien County history independently carries the line to Niles in August 1903 and on to Berrien Springs in December 1905, the two records agreeing in substance. The line left South Bend through Notre Dame and St. Mary's, ran north along the corridor the Dixie Highway would take through Roseland, and crossed into Michigan south of Niles, where its bridge stacked it on top of both New York Central branches at the celebrated three-level crossing. The Murdock brothers' system took it in; financial difficulty from 1924, the brothers' deaths in 1925, receivership in 1927, reorganization as the Northern Indiana Railway in 1930, receivership again in 1931 — and the end, which the CERA record fixes to the morning: abandonment of the interurban lines was "ordered for June 2, 1934, actually occurred the morning of June 1 when a strike took place." The verdict prints whole: no interurban or electric line ever entered the Granger frame. The cars crossed Clay Township's western tier for thirty-one years, close enough that Granger people rode them from Notre Dame and Roseland stops; on this ground itself there was never a rail, a wire, or a stop.
Sources: Michigan Official Directory and Legislative Manual, 1901–1902 (the Michigan Central South Bend Division station list: Niles, Bertrand 5, South Bend 12); Coolidge (1906), Part 7 (the Air Line of 1870 "continued to South Bend"; the interurban completed to Niles August 1903, continued to Berrien Springs December 1905); Central Electric Railfans' Association, Electric Railways of Indiana, Bulletin 104 (1960) — the Southern Michigan Railway record quoted (the 1906 consolidation; Niles 3 August 1903; St. Joseph 16 May 1906; the "Fruit Belt Route"; the receiverships and the 1 June 1934 abandonment); Trains news report, from the South Bend Tribune (the Notre Dame spur: 3.7 miles, last rail service 1995, STB abandonment approval April 2012, scrapping); City of Niles triple-decker crossing record, michiganrailroads.com (the interurban above the two Central branches south of Niles).