Two railroads, crossing in town, both gone

1883–1974 and after

Lakeville was a two-railroad town. The railroad test for this town returns a documented positive — the opposite of the pointer answer its size might suggest. The first line was the Vandalia's: Howard's Union section says that "after the building of the Vandalia railroad its prosperity was assured," and his town section, "After another interval the Vandalia railroad came in, and still later the Wabash gave connection with Chicago and with the east." The line is the South Bend Branch of the Terre Haute & Logansport (the Vandalia), Logansport to South Bend, built in 1883–84 — 1883 true of the Logansport–Marmont portion only; the Lakeville segment is 1884 on every carrier that dates it separately — with Lakeville among its stations. Its later course ran Vandalia (the 1905 five-road consolidation), into the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis in 1916/17 and under Pennsylvania Railroad lease from 1921, to Penn Central in 1968 and Conrail in 1976; the segment through Lakeville — Nutwood to Culver — was abandoned in 1973 and its track removed in 1974. The second line crossed it in town: the Wabash's Fourth District, built by the Montpelier & Chicago Railroad Company from 1892, opened in the spring of 1893 — the system history dates the opening 21 April 1893; Poor's Manual, by way of the line's own county history, gives freight from 30 April and passenger service from 14 May 1893 — both tellings printed in this build's register, neither preferred. Leased to the Norfolk & Western in 1964, the Wabash line's Lakeville segment was in time abandoned and removed as well; the date of that removal at docket strength was not reached and stands as a named gap with the INDOT abandonments list and the STB docket as its settlers. What the crossing looked like survives in a museum's photograph caption: "Lakeville, Indiana was where the Wabash 4th District and the Pennsy's South Bend branch crossed… Nothing remains here today and you really have to look hard to tell the railroads were ever here" (Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum). A modern compilation's claim that "the railroad in 1845 spurred further growth" in Lakeville is printed in the register as what it is: irreconcilable with Chapman's first-hand 1880 "no railroad" and with both lines' documented dates — an error in the compilation, not an alternative history.

A third road touches the record at the township's edge: the New Jersey, Indiana & Illinois, at the Dillon junction — carried in this build's Trains section (pointer added at assembly, DELTA-LK5-3).