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1881–1983 · THE SECOND LINE
The north–south line came out of a foreclosure and a decade of building westward: after the Plymouth, Kankakee & Pacific foreclosure sale of 5 May 1881, the Indiana, Illinois & Iowa Railroad was created in Illinois on 11 July 1881 and consolidated on 27 December 1881; it built from Momence, Illinois, to North Judson, Indiana — 56.2 miles — and extended to Knox three years later, in 1886. The Indiana company was formed by consolidations on 9 January 1893, built the final 33.4 miles from Knox to South Bend in 1894 (with a two-mile Michigan Central connecting branch at South Bend), and consolidated on 15 September 1898 into the combined Indiana, Illinois & Iowa Railroad. On the year the road first reached North Judson the secondary record divides, and the division prints whole. Conflict C104: American-Rails.com dates the line built westward from Streator, Illinois, to North Judson in 1881; the Indiana Transportation History account, citing the ICC Valuation Reports, dates the Momence–North Judson building 1883, after the 1881 corporate creations. The corporate dates are common ground; the construction year is not merged.
The first service into South Bend is dated by a court record, of all carriers. In Indiana, Illinois & Iowa R. Co. v. Bundy, 152 Ind. 590 (1899), the evidence as recited states that brakeman Harris Bundy was injured on 22 December 1894 coupling cars in the switch yard at North Judson, and that "six days before the injury, appellant had opened an extension of its road to South Bend, and discontinued and removed its switching crew from North Judson," Bundy returning from his third trip to South Bend. The extension to South Bend — the segment through North Liberty — therefore opened on or about 16 December 1894: a derivation from the Bundy recital, printed labelled as a derivation, not as a date any carrier states outright. North Liberty was the first community out of South Bend on the new line, thirteen and six-tenths rail miles from the county seat on the 1901 timetable's station list, and the two lines crossed in the town.
The succession after 1894 is the banked frame, dug to its joints: on 9 April 1906 the Three I consolidated with the Indiana Harbor Railroad into the Chicago, Indiana & Southern Railroad, a New York Central system company; on 23 December 1914 the CI&S was consolidated into the New York Central Railroad itself, and the line ran as the NYC's Kankakee Belt; Penn Central took it in 1968 and Conrail in 1976. Passenger traffic on the Belt was always secondary — local trains and gas-electric "doodlebugs" served the small towns — and by Conrail's creation in 1976 it was gone; the date of its last run at North Liberty is not carried in any record reached and stands inside gap G-W1T-4 with the timetable settlers.
Principal sources: Indiana, Illinois & Iowa R. Co. v. Bundy, 152 Ind. 590, 53 N.E. 175 (1899), as recited (snippet strength; the carrier is a court record); Indiana Transportation History, citing ICC Valuation Reports (secondary); American-Rails.com, Kankakee Belt (secondary, 8 December 2025); the NL-1 frame record for the consolidations.