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The interurban: proposed once, never built

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1904 · TESTED NEGATIVE FOR BUILT SERVICE

No interurban ever ran at North Liberty, and the record supports the negative at system strength: the Northern Indiana Railway's and the Chicago, South Bend & Northern Indiana's own line lists do not name the town; Marlette's 1959 interurban history and the CERA Volume 3 line list, which do name South Bend, Mishawaka, Elkhart, Goshen, Nappanee and (projected) Plymouth, do not; and Howard's chapter on public utilities, whose contents were read whole, carries no interurban for the town at all. The negative is the finding for built service.

One proposal touched the town, in print, in the summer of 1904: a syndicate under general manager W. H. McCullough proposed a gasoline-motor interurban from South Bend to Plymouth "by way of North Liberty, Walkerton, Tyner, and Plymouth," with materials to be bought in South Bend — reported in the Plymouth Tribune of 7 July 1904, quoting the Walkerton Independent. Gasoline-motor cars were the era's cheap substitute for electrification on thin routes, and the proposal is of a piece with the unbuilt "electric scale" Plymouth projection the CERA list records. No construction record, franchise proceeding, or later revival of the McCullough line was found in any record reached; the proposal prints as a proposal, at the strength of one period newspaper item, and the town's interurban account closes where the record does: graded, syndicated, and never turned into a rail.

Principal sources: Plymouth Tribune, 7 July 1904, quoting the Walkerton Independent (snippet strength); Marlette (1959) and CERA Vol. 3 line lists (search strength); Northern Indiana Ry. / CSB&NI line lists (search strength); Howard (1907), Vol. 1 contents (read first-hand).

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Source: The interurban: proposed once, never built, Moosed History by Project Moosed, https://history.projectmoosed.com/usa/midwest/indiana/north-liberty/railroads/interurban-proposed-once-never-built/