One Company at Last, Receivership, and the End in 1934

1930–1940

The two South Bend interurban families became one corporation on 8 February 1930 — and the combined property was in receivership again within two years. Northern Indiana Railway, Inc. was incorporated on 8 February 1930 and in operation on 10 February, successor by purchase at foreclosure to both the Chicago, South Bend & Northern Indiana Railway and the Southern Michigan Railway, with capital of $1,000,000. Its 1930 system measured 157 miles: South Bend–Michigan City 41, South Bend–Goshen 26, South Bend–Saint Joseph 35, and the city lines of South Bend, Mishawaka, Elkhart and Michigan City. Service on the St. Joseph line ran two-hourly in 1931. Receivership returned that year; the employee timetable of 9 July 1933 is issued over the name of Raymond R. Smith, Receiver. The end came by court order a year later: abandonment of the interurban lines was ordered for 2 June 1934 and actually occurred on the morning of 1 June, when a strike took place; Marlette dates the abandonment of all rail lines except South Bend and Mishawaka to 31 May 1934. No ICC or Indiana Public Service Commission docket number for the abandonment was reached — the order stands in the secondary record as a receivership-court order, and the docket itself is registered as an open gap (G-TRN-1). One famous name does not belong in this company's story: the Insull consolidation of 1 August 1930 that created the Indiana Railroad took in Union Traction, Indiana Service, Interstate Public Service, Northern Indiana Power and THI&E — not the Northern Indiana Railway of South Bend, a different company from Northern Indiana Power despite the near-identical names. The railway's ten Cummings lightweight cars of 1930, seized by their builder for non-payment, later ran on Insull's Indiana Railroad; that is the whole of the Insull connection.

Sources: Marlette (1959), Northern Indiana Railway, Inc. entry, verbatim; CERA Bulletin 104, the abandonment passage verbatim; CERA Bulletin 132 (Northern Indiana Railway), table of contents, "South Bend End of Interurban Service, June 1, 1934"; the Indiana Railroad constituent lists in Marlette, for the Insull negative.