The depot, the tower, and the water tank

By 1906 – gone today · the crossing as a place

The crossing had a staff, and one night it had a crime.This postcard view is looking west showing the depot, the tower and water tank. Nothing remains here today and you really have to look hard to tell the railroads were ever here" (Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum, the Bob Albert collection). The view shows one depot — "the depot," singular — and the documentary record agrees in form: on the morning of 16 August 1906 "the Safe [in] the Wabash and Vandalia Railroad depot at Lakeville St. Joseph county was blown" by three men, who got between $25 and $35, while "Charles Hoople the night operator was in the Tower across the tracks from the depot when the robbers made their appearance. He was ordered to remain there while the Safe blowing was in Progress" (Goshen Democrat, 17 August 1906, p. 1 — reached at snippet strength through paywalled OCR, and labelled so). The two carriers together prove, at their stated strengths: the depot was described jointly in 1906 as the Wabash and Vandalia Railroad depot — consistent with a shared or union depot, though no union-depot agreement document was found; the tower was a separate building across the tracks from the depot, staffed at night by an operator the record names, Charles Hoople; and the crossing carried a water tank for the steam years. The safe-blowing itself belongs to the crime leg's ground; it prints here because it is the tower's and the depot's best documentary witness. What the record does not give is named, not filled: the depot's build dates, any union-depot agreement, the tower's name or interlocking designation, and the tower's build and removal dates (gap G-TR-3). No interlocking name is invented for it.

Principal sources: Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum, historic photo gallery p. 3 (first-hand, museum caption); Goshen Democrat, 17 August 1906 (snippet, paywalled OCR — strength labelled in the text).