Two railroads, 1893 and 1894 — and none today

1893–1989

North Liberty was served by two railroads, built one year apart; both are abandoned, and no rail line serves or passes the town today. The town's own 2015 Comprehensive Plan states the frame: the town "is located along two former railroad lines that have been abandoned." The first line through was the Wabash's Chicago extension, built under the exact corporate name the record gives — the Montpelier & Chicago Railroad Company, whose articles were filed in Indiana on 28 February 1890; the Wabash's engineer George S. Morison described the proposed extension to the directors on 1 June 1891 as "legally called the Montpelier and Chicago Railroad," and tracklaying began at Montpelier, Ohio, on 1 July 1892. A church periodical carries the town-level proof: "The Wabash railroad has passed through [North Liberty] the present year" (The Spirit of Missions, August 1893). The opening date itself conflicts in the record and prints whole: one system history dates the connector's opening 21 April 1893; a county newspaper history citing Poor's Manual gives open for freight 30 April 1893 and for passenger 14 May 1893. The line ran as the Wabash's Chicago Extension and then its Fourth District; through Chicago–Montpelier passenger service ended 1 April 1933, and mixed trains ran until the fall of 1962. The Wabash was leased to the Norfolk & Western at 12:01 a.m. on 16 October 1964 — one carrier gives full N&W ownership in 1970, another carries the Wabash company's formal merger into N&W in November 1991; both steps print, unblended. N&W renamed the line the Gary District and began abandoning segments in 1983; a researcher summary of the abandonment record dates the segment through North Liberty — Wakarusa to Pine — to 1989, at secondary strength with the docket still owed. The surviving east end of the line, South Milford to Montpelier under the Indiana Northeastern Railroad, does not reach the town, and the Wabash's combination depot at North Liberty has been torn down. The second line was the Indiana, Illinois & Iowa Railroad — the "Three I" — whose Knox-to-South Bend segment, 33.4 miles, was built in 1894, making North Liberty the first community out of South Bend on what became the Kankakee Belt and the crossing point of the two lines. On 9 April 1906 the Three I consolidated with the Indiana Harbor Railroad into the Chicago, Indiana and Southern Railroad, a New York Central system company, and on 23 December 1914 the CI&S was consolidated into the New York Central Railroad itself; the line passed to Penn Central in 1968 and Conrail in 1976. Its North Liberty depot stood east of the tracks just south of the State Road 4 crossing. A segment history dates the abandonment of the South Bend–Wheatfield portion to 1982 and the track's removal to 1983, at the same secondary strength, and 2004 photographs show the abandoned right-of-way at the SR 4 crossing. In town today the Three I corridor is the Tamarack Trail, built along the abandoned railroad corridor between the Community Center and the Youth League Ballpark, and the Wabash corridor is a town-owned linear parcel along Wabash Avenue. A 1916–17 state gazetteer catches the junction in its working years: North Liberty is "On the C. I. & S. and Wabash R. Rs. in Liberty township, St. Joseph county, 16 miles from South Bend," with "a bank and a newspaper, the News."