Crossings and separations: the lines stayed at grade

1851–PRESENT · THE STREET RECORD

No elevation fight came to Mishawaka: South Bend's railroads produced one of the great grade-crossing fights in American law — a main line down a city street, two Supreme Court cases, and a 1929 viaduct. Mishawaka's record carries nothing of the kind, and the absence is printed at its true size: both trunk lines crossed the town's streets at grade from the beginning, no elevation or depression of either line was ever undertaken in Mishawaka, and the Lake Shore line crosses the city's south-side streets at grade today. The grade-separation record the town does have is later, smaller, and all on the Canadian National's north-side line, built not for a railroad's sake but for the streets'.

The two underpasses: On North Main Street, the grade crossing of the Grand Trunk's line was replaced by an underpass in a project the South Bend Tribune recorded in 2007: the North Side Feed store, which had stood in the 1100 block of North Main Street for more than a century, was to be torn down that spring, after roughly 112 years, "to make way for an underpass." Six years later the Capital Avenue corridor, extended north across the east side, was carried under the same railroad in the Capital Avenue railroad underpass, completed in 2013 — the Transit section carries the road's own course, and records that the underpass let the city close the 1929 Fire Station No. 4 at Brook and Lincolnway East. On the freight-only lines, the Elkhart & Western's own St. Joseph River bridge east of the Ball Band works stood into the Penn Central years — hopper cars crossed it in February 1976 — and went out with the lifting of the line's western end.

Sources:

1. South Bend Tribune, 2007 (the North Side Feed record) — the store in the 1100 block of North Main Street, about 112 years on the street, demolished that spring for a railroad underpass.
2. This build's Transit section and its sources — the Capital Avenue extension's completion in 2012–13 and the railroad underpass of 2013; the closing of Fire Station No. 4 (Brook and Lincolnway East, 1929) after the underpass, per the fire station's National Register nomination.
3. South Bend's Trains section — the elevation fight, its Supreme Court cases and the 1929 viaduct, South Bend's record, pointed to here for the contrast.
4. Monon Society, New York Central page — the Elkhart & Western bridge across the St. Joseph River east of Ball Band in service in February 1976.