The first interurban: the Chicago, South Bend & Northern Indiana

1907–1934

The northern of the two electric lines was the one that died. Howard closed his town chapter in 1907 with the prophecy that "the two interurban railways soon to connect the town with South Bend, on the east and with Laporte, Michigan City and Chicago on the west" would make New Carlisle "one of the most desirable residence towns in the country" — and that summer the two companies fought over this ground in the open. The La Porte Argus of 16 August 1907 reported that "the Northern Indiana and the Chicago, Lake Shore & South Bend have come to terms in New Carlisle… The original construction of the two interurban lines resulted in three crossings over the course of one-half mile as the two companies each tried to stop the other from further construction. The agreement calls for one crossing, at the New Carlisle station." That was the crossing war of 1907: two electric railways building through the same half-mile at the bottom of the hill, crossing each other three times as each tried to block the other, settled at one crossing by the station they would share. The Chicago, South Bend & Northern Indiana Railway — the "Northern Indiana" of the Argus's shorthand — opened its service in 1908 on a route binding Michigan City, La Porte, Hudson Lake, New Carlisle, South Bend, Elkhart and Goshen, its line through this ground paralleling the South Shore just to the north between Bendix and Hudson Lake, crossing the steam roads on its way; west of Lydick its right-of-way ran beside the South Shore's through New Carlisle, then turned south to end at La Porte. The company, bankrupt by 1927, was reorganized as the Northern Indiana Railway — the name under which the system's last years ran — and on 30 May 1934 the Northern Indiana ceased business as an interurban: the through service over this ground ended that day, its South Bend and Mishawaka city lines passing to buses, and the system's remaining street railways following by 15 June 1940. "The Northern Indiana failed during the Depression and its tracks were removed," the National Register nomination records, in the past tense of a completed fact; its corridor is the one gap in the three-line frame at the bottom of the hill today, traceable in the right-of-way west of Lydick almost all the way into town.

Principal sources: La Porte Argus, 16 August 1907 (as carried in this build's spine); the Northern Indiana Railway record (monon.org; the South Shore timeline record); Central Electric Railfans' Association, Electric Railways of Indiana, Bulletin 104; the National Register nomination.