Electrification and the rebuilding: the companies in succession, 1889-1899

1889-1899 · CONSOLIDATION, FORFEITURE AND FORECLOSURE

The 1889 consolidation: The horse-car company did not electrify Mishawaka under its own name. On 10 September 1889 the South Bend Railway Company and the South Bend and Mishawaka Street Railway Company were consolidated as the South Bend and Mishawaka Railway Company, capitalized at $250,000. Jerry Marlette's case history of the consolidated company gives the electrification in one sentence: the South Bend city lines were electrified late in 1889, and the South Bend-Mishawaka line early in 1890; by 1892 the property measured 11 miles. De Kever's city history tells the Mishawaka end of the same change with the Mishawaka Enterprise's approval attached: in the summer of 1890 the horse-drawn streetcars were replaced by electric cars, and the paper wrote that everybody was in love with them — no dust, as with the horse cars, a breeze equal to a sail on the water, the cars handsome at night lit by electricity. An 1890 aerial illustration in the same history shows the streetcar lines on West Second, North Main, Bridge and West Joseph (Mishawaka Avenue) streets. The route record agrees on the north bank — Route 9's horse cars gave way to electric cars in 1890 — and the electric cars of 1890 are the ones Mishawaka rode for the next half century in steadily larger forms. One summary in the standard literature tells the sequence differently and is printed as it stands: the CERA history of 1960 writes that after a receivership the company was consolidated in 1899 with the South Bend Railway to form the South Bend & Mishawaka Railway, and the lines were then partly electrified — a telling that moves both the consolidation and the electrification a decade later than the dated record above, and which the dated record, not the summary, governs here.

The south side forfeited and rebuilt: The south-bank line was the property's weak side. Marlette's case history records that the consolidated company forfeited its rights to the south side of the St. Joseph River in 1894, for inefficient and inadequate service. A new company was chartered to replace the line: the General Power and Quick Transit Company, incorporated 2 April 1894 with $100,000 capital, in Marlette's words the original company that built a new line to replace the old line of the South Bend and Mishawaka Railway Company. ChicagoRailFan's route record tells the same failure in the same terms — the original south-side line had been poorly constructed while rushed into service — and dates the new line's opening to 1895, as does the CERA history of the later Northern Indiana Railway, which remembers the 1895 connection between the two cities as an electric rail line using large double-truck passenger cars operated in two-car trains, making the intercity line one of the earlier of its kind. Marlette's case history gives the General Power company's operating date as 1 January 1896, with four miles of track on the south side of the river and seven cars on its 1898 roster. The one-year difference between the 1895 opening of the route record and the trade history and Marlette's 1 January 1896 operating date is printed as it stands; the two may mark construction complete against full operation, but no source reached reconciles them.

Foreclosure and the 1899 merger: The consolidated company did not survive its south side's failure. Marlette records the South Bend and Mishawaka Railway sold at foreclosure to the South Bend Street Railway Company on 6 August 1895; the successor, a reorganization capitalized at $300,000, began operating 9 August 1895 over 12.4 miles in the two contiguous cities. Three years later the whole cluster — the South Bend Street Railway, the General Power and Quick Transit Company, and the South Bend and Elkhart Railway, the interurban company of the next entry — was merged into the Indiana Railway Company on 15 March 1899. One conflict stands in the compilations and is printed whole: ChicagoRailFan's route history has the General Power company merging into the South Bend Street Railway Company in 1898, while Marlette's three separate case histories each date the merger of each company into the Indiana Railway Company to 15 March 1899. The trade history's triple attestation is the stronger record, but the route compilation's version is not suppressed.

Sources:

1. Jerry Marlette, Electric Railroads of Indiana (1959) — case histories of the South Bend and Mishawaka Railway Company (consolidated 10 September 1889; electrification late 1889 and early 1890; 11 miles in 1892; south-side rights forfeited 1894; foreclosure sale 6 August 1895), the General Power and Quick Transit Company (incorporated 2 April 1894; operating date 1 January 1896; four miles on the south side; seven cars in 1898; merged into the Indiana Railway Company 15 March 1899) and the South Bend Street Railway Company (successor 6 August 1895; operating 9 August 1895; 12.4 miles; merged 15 March 1899).
2. Peter De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — the electric cars of the summer of 1890, the Enterprise quotation, and the 1890 illustration's streets.
3. ChicagoRailFan, South Bend transit route record — Route 9 electric from 1890; Route 11's original line poorly constructed and rushed; the General Power company formed 1894, new line opened 1895, merged into the South Bend Street Railway in 1898 (conflict printed in the entry).
4. George K. Bradley, Northern Indiana Railway Inc., CERA Bulletin 132 (1998), published summary — the two cities joined in 1895 by an electric line of large double-truck cars in two-car trains.