Both depots: one demolished, one unaccounted for

1890s–1962 AND AFTER · FATES AT DIFFERENT STRENGTHS

Each railroad built its own station, and their fates are known at opposite strengths. The Wabash's was a combination depot — freight and passenger under one roof. It was still a working depot in January 1978, when the Blizzard of '78 record places the town's crisis there: George Thomas and his wife lived in the apartment behind the Garrett Garage, and "on Wednesday of the first week the Saylor's took them in. Mr. Saylor was the depot operator for Wabash" (Baird, recording Thomas's account) — operator N. A. Saylor, the one North Liberty station agent the record reached names; agents for the other years of both stations stand as gap G-W1T-6. The depot is gone now: the historic-structures survey of New Haven's surviving Wabash combination depot records that besides New Haven's, "only two others in the state of Indiana have survived" of the design — at Wakarusa, restored and moved, and at North Liberty, "torn down" — a 1986-status comparison, not a demolition date. The date of the tearing-down was not reached in any carrier; it stands after January 1978, and the item is gap G-W1T-1, its settlers the town newspaper's file and the county demolitions record. The town's own plan carries the corridor's afterlife: the North Liberty segment of the old Wabash right-of-way "is currently owned by the city and extends its length along Wabash Avenue," and the plan's brownfield table lists the corridor's ground as "Norfolk & Southern Railroad, 205 S. State St." — an address fragment only, printed at the strength a plan table carries (see cross-pass note, gaps).

The Three I / New York Central depot's site is settled first-hand, its fate after 1962 is not. The Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum's Historic Railroad Photos page for North Liberty (photo 7) places it "at ground level near the road crossing... on the east side of the tracks, just south of the State Road 4 crossing" — the SR 4 crossing fixing the site on the Kankakee Belt's line through town. It was standing about 1962: a dated photograph on the Monon.org NYC pages is captioned "North Liberty, Indiana depot on the '3 I'/Kankakee Belt in about 1962," and a Bob Albert postcard view (read first-hand on the same page) shows milk cans lined on its platform — the freight life of the next article, frozen at the depot door. Whether the building survived the line's abandonment was not found in any record reached; the item stands as gap G-W1T-2, its settlers the North Liberty News file and property records for the ground east of the tracks south of SR 4. A build date for this depot was NOT reached as a North Liberty fact: the nearest analogues — the CI&S's 1906 station at Hamlet and the 1907 station of identical material at Knox — are neighbouring towns' records and are printed nowhere in this section as this town's date.

Principal sources: historic-structures.com, New Haven Wabash depot survey (read first-hand); Baird (snippet); Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum, Historic Railroad Photos Page 7 (read first-hand); Monon.org NYC Page 5 (read first-hand); Comprehensive Plan 2015 (read first-hand).