Buses under the railway's heirs: Northern Indiana Transit and the private years, 1940-1968

1940-1968 · THE SAME MANAGEMENT, THEN OUTSIDE INTERESTS

The succession: The buses that replaced Mishawaka's streetcars were the railway's own. The Northern Indiana Railway, Inc. had sold its surviving rail property — the South Bend and Mishawaka city lines, the only rails it had left — to Northern Indiana Transit, Inc. in January 1940, months before the last cars ran, and the new company worked the conversion of 15 June 1940 and ran the buses of both cities from 16 June. In Marlette's tabulation the successor's property is given simply as South Bend and Mishawaka, 14 miles. Motor-bus operation then continued under the same management until 1956, on the CERA history's account, when the company was sold to outside interests. The buses themselves carried the succession in metal: the fleet record shows Northern Indiana Transit's GMC coaches of 1946-1951 passing in due course into the public corporation's service, so that Transpo's first Mishawaka riders rode, in part, in the private company's buses.

The public turn: By the 1960s the private succession was failing as it was failing everywhere in America, and the two cities it served took the property public together — the formation of the South Bend Public Transportation Corporation in 1968, the subject of the next entry. Mishawaka's share in that act is the point of this one: the bus system the corporation inherited was not a South Bend system with a Mishawaka extension but the two-city property it had been since the horse cars of 1885, and the corporation the cities formed was, from its first day, Mishawaka's transit authority as much as South Bend's.

Sources:

1. Jerry Marlette, Electric Railroads of Indiana (1959) — the sale of the South Bend and Mishawaka lines to Northern Indiana Transit, Inc., January 1940; the successor's property tabulated as South Bend and Mishawaka, 14 miles.
2. George K. Bradley, Northern Indiana Railway Inc., CERA Bulletin 132 (1998), published summary — motor-bus operations continued under the same management until the company was sold to outside interests in 1956.
3. Canadian Public Transit Discussion Board fleet wiki, Transpo roster — ex-Northern Indiana Transit GMC coaches of 1946-1951 in the public corporation's fleet.