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1884–1989 · the working lines
The freight record is strong at line level and thin at town level, and it prints at those strengths. The Vandalia's freight importance was the county's industry: the line ended at Studebaker's factories in South Bend and was "a very important link" for the company, and its several grain elevators kept shipping after the passenger trains thinned (the line history). Lakeville's own elevator stands at directory strength in this build: the 1916–17 Polk gazetteer names the Kramer & Wolf elevator among the town's businesses, beside the Lakeville Lumber Co. — the two rail-side shippers of the automobile's first decade. No carrier found carries the Kramer & Wolf elevator's own course — its building, its succession, its shipping years (gap G-TR-4); it stands at the directory line, unexpanded, rather than dressed in the line-level record. On the Wabash, the freight evidence is likewise line-level: the mixed train "would work all the interchanges and industries btw Montpelier and Gary," and no carrier found names grain or lumber shipments at Lakeville on the Wabash specifically, or gives the date of the last freight through Lakeville on either line (gap G-TR-5) — the last freight is bounded only by the ledger below: the Vandalia's daily freights gone by 1969, its segment abandoned 1973; the Wabash's segment worked until its 1989 abandonment. The freight the town's own economy legs document — the lumber, grain and produce of the directory headers — moved on these two lines for a century; the weighing of it belongs to the record classes (waybills, elevator books) that have not reached this build, and the want is printed rather than estimated.
Principal sources: the South Bend Branch line history (Meints/Sulzer, as compiled); Polk's Indiana gazetteer, 1916–17 (directory, swept whole in LK-4); Baird (author strength).