The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
the unbuilt roll
Two boom-era proposals belong to the county's story; neither laid track through Roseland. The Niles & Buchanan Railway is the nearer miss: the corporation existed — CERA lists a Niles & Buchanan Railway Company among the 1906 consolidation constituents of the Southern Michigan Railway — but the Buchanan track itself was evidently never operated; one survey concludes the line never got past grading, and Buchanan appears in the 1907 fare card only as a connection point on the Peach Belt Way. The Chicago–New York Electric Air Line was the era's grandest paper railroad: proposed in 1905–06 as a 750-mile straight-line electric road from Chicago to New York, ten hours for ten dollars, its Indiana construction arm the Goshen, South Bend & Chicago Railroad, incorporated 16 April 1904. About twenty miles were ever built, all in La Porte and Porter counties; no Air Line track was built in St. Joseph County and none was projected through Roseland or Clay Township in any source reached — its place here is as the competitor whose building race west from South Bend the Northern Indiana's own history records. A modern echo closes the roll: between 2006 and 2012 a "South Bend Railway" revival was proposed for the out-of-service Niles Branch; it never came to pass, and the branch's tracks were taken out in 2012.
Sources: CERA Bulletin 104 (the consolidation list and the Air Line passage); the Niles & Buchanan survey at Fallen Flags (frrandp.com); the Chicago–New York Electric Air Line record; Notre Dame Magazine, "Echoes: The old ND&W" (the revival).