Inside the Northern Indiana system: Mishawaka's miles, 1899-1940

1899-1940 · INDIANA RAILWAY TO NORTHERN INDIANA RAILWAY INC.

The succession: From the merger of 15 March 1899, Mishawaka's cars belonged to a regional system, and the city's trackage can be followed through the system's own statistics. The Indiana Railway Company held the lines until the Northern Indiana Railway Company succeeded in 1905: Marlette's tabulation of the 1905 property gives South Bend-Goshen 26 miles, South Bend 19, Elkhart 8, Goshen 4 and Mishawaka 3, for 74 miles in all. On 25 January 1907 the Chicago, South Bend & Northern Indiana Railway succeeded by purchase; its 1921 total was 125.2 miles, with Mishawaka still counted at 3. The last rail owner was the Northern Indiana Railway, Inc., incorporated 8 February 1930 and successor by purchase at foreclosure on 10 February 1930; its 1930 system measured 157 miles, with Mishawaka counted at 2 miles against the 3 of 1905 and 1921 — the change stands in the tabulations, unexplained by any source reached. In January 1940 the rail lines of South Bend and Mishawaka, by then the only rails the company had left, were sold to Northern Indiana Transit, Inc., whose own tabulation in Marlette is a bus-era epitaph: South Bend and Mishawaka, 14 miles.

The McKinley line: Mishawaka's third streetcar line was the youngest. The route record dates Route 1, the McKinley/Mishawaka line, as electric from 1912; it was the eastward continuation of South Bend's Madison streetcar line, crossing the river and running the length of McKinley Avenue — the road the AM General works would later front — through the city's north side. With the two bank lines of 1885-86 it gave Mishawaka three rail approaches: the north bank along the river, the south bank through downtown, and McKinley across the top of the town. Photographs in the Northern Indiana record place the system's cars on Mishawaka streets into the last years — car 205 at Ironwood and Lincolnway East, and, by November 1938, a company motor bus already photographed at Mishawaka Avenue and 32nd Street, the replacement technology at work in the city while the cars still ran.

One night, pointed to: In 1909, inside this succession, Mishawaka's first electric streetlights were switched on during the Princess pageant — the night the princess of the legend threw the switch. The lights, the pageant and the legend are carried whole in the Culture section and the Story of Mishawaka section; the railway's own course that year was the unglamorous one of this entry, a three-mile city property inside a 125-mile system, and is recorded here only so the succession is not broken at the year the city remembers.

Sources:

1. Jerry Marlette, Electric Railroads of Indiana (1959) — the Northern Indiana Railway Company (1905) trackage by city, Mishawaka 3 of 74 miles; the Chicago, South Bend & Northern Indiana Railway (25 January 1907), 125.2 miles in 1921, Mishawaka 3; the Northern Indiana Railway, Inc. (8 February 1930, foreclosure purchase 10 February 1930), 157 miles in 1930, Mishawaka 2; the January 1940 sale to Northern Indiana Transit, Inc., tabulated at 14 miles for the two cities.
2. ChicagoRailFan, South Bend transit route record — Route 1, McKinley/Mishawaka, electric from 1912, the former Madison streetcar line.
3. Monon Railroad Historical-Technical Society, Northern Indiana Railway photograph pages — car 205 at Ironwood and Lincolnway East; motor unit 802 at Mishawaka Avenue and 32nd Street, November 1938.