Every rail-trail conversion, individually — and none of them here

The corridor holds three true conversions, each with its railroad named, and Penn Township holds none. The East Bank Trail (1988) is catalogued by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy as a rail-trail, the system's first. The LaSalle Trail (2001) is the interurban conversion, told in item 8. The Coal Line Trail is the fullest conversion story in the county: its railroad was the Notre Dame & Western, the university's coal spur off the old New York Central South Bend–Niles main line — 3.7 miles of line, last rail service in 1995, its abandonment instituted in 2011 by the City of South Bend and the universities and approved by the Surface Transportation Board in April 2012. The trail followed in phases: phase one, Lincolnway West to Riverside Drive, opened in 2022 (INDOT's newsletter says September; the city's construction page says November — printed in conflict, unresolved); phase two, completed March 2024 at a $7 million phase cost, carried the trail across the St. Joseph River on the old railroad bridge to the SR 933 Trail, and the whole was renamed the Stephen J. Luecke Coal Line Trail for the mayor who had doubted an earlier rail scheme for the same grade; a final phase south to the Martin Luther King Jr. Dream Center was not expected to begin construction until 2026. At the region's edge, at boundary size, stand Elkhart County's conversions — the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail and the Maple City Greenway it joins, on their own abandoned grades in the next county east. In Penn Township the test is empty in both directions: the town's one steam corridor is live Norfolk Southern freight, never abandoned and never converted, and its electric corridor is item 8.

Sources: TrailLink, East Bank Trail record (rail-trail category; 1988 opening); Trains Magazine news report on the Notre Dame spur (3.7 miles; last service 1995; abandonment instituted 2011; STB approval April 2012; Notre Dame & Western naming); City of South Bend, Coal Line Trail construction pages, 2023–24 (phase two to SR 933; May 2024 expected completion) and South Bend Tribune reporting via Notre Dame Insider, 25 March 2024 ($7 million second phase completed; Luecke naming; phase one opened November 2022; final phase not before 2026); INDOT, Inside INDOT, November 2022 (phase one opened September 2022; 80 percent federal funding) — the September/November conflict printed whole. Rights basis: published records; no image pulled.