Mishawaka Railroad History: The Railroads of Mishawaka

Trains · the railroads of Mishawaka

Mishawaka was a railroad town from the day the first locomotive steamed in behind the little wood-burner John Strycker on 4 October 1851, and it has never stopped being one — it has only stopped being a passenger town. Two trunk lines came to the mill town the river had made: the Michigan Southern's road along the south bank, which grew into the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern and the New York Central's Water Level Route, and the Grand Trunk's road along the north side, which tied the town to Chicago and to Canada. A third road was built for freight alone: Herbert Bucklen's Elkhart & Western, ten miles of riverbank track that became the Ball Band works' door to the world and was called one of the most profitable short lines anywhere. A fourth, less than two miles long, hauled coal to the Twin Branch power station for fifty-one years and ran, in its middle age, on storage batteries under a wire. The passenger trains are all gone — the New York Central's station calls ended in the 1950s, the Grand Trunk's own trains ended in 1971 without Amtrak keeping a Mishawaka stop, and Amtrak's Chicago–New York trains have run through the city without stopping ever since, between the stations at South Bend and Elkhart. What remains is a freight city of three railroads: Norfolk Southern's double-track Chicago Line across the south side, Canadian National's single track along the north, and an Elkhart & Western once again working west from Elkhart to the city's northeast edge, under the name the road was born with in 1888.