The railroad of 1851

1851

"The coming of the Lake Shore railroad, in 1851, secured the stability of the little municipality." So Howard writes, and the National Register nomination repeats the name; the build chain underneath the name is printed whole because the 1851 builder was not yet the "Lake Shore." The track through New Carlisle was laid by the Northern Indiana and Chicago Railroad, chartered 30 November 1850, which built west from the Michigan state line through Elkhart, Osceola, and Mishawaka to South Bend and opened on 4 October 1851; the full line to Chicago opened 20 February 1852. That company merged on 25 April 1855 into the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroad; the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway dates from 1869; the New York Central & Hudson River took a majority interest about 1877 — the nomination's "absorbed in the late 1870s" — and on 22 December 1914 the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern merged into the new New York Central Railroad. The line then ran Penn Central (1968), Conrail (1976), and Norfolk Southern (1999), and today is Norfolk Southern's Chicago Line at the town's north edge, carrying Amtrak's Lake Shore Limited and the Floridian through without a stop; the nearest Amtrak station is South Bend. One error in the town's own telling is dispelled here so it does not travel: the town's About page says "In 1852, the South Shore Railroad came through the community." The South Shore is the electric line of 1908; the road of 1851–52 was the steam line above, and Discover New Carlisle's softer repeat of the error prints as the town's telling, corrected by the record. The town's incorporation followed fifteen years after the railroad; the instrument is dug whole in the government section.