The Grand Trunk down Division Street

1866–PRESENT · THE CANADIAN ROAD

The second trunk line ran down the middle of a city street for sixty years: The Grand Trunk's predecessor was chartered by Indiana in 1866 to build from the Michigan line west through South Bend toward Chicago, and the city — itself a stockholder in the enterprise — granted street rights by ordinance in 1868: one track down Division Street, with double track permitted from the river bridge to Taylor Street. A single track was built in 1871. The Grand Trunk completed its own Chicago route from Valparaiso in 1880, incorporating the whole Port Huron–Chicago line as the Chicago & Grand Trunk Railway, and by 1900 the Grand Trunk Western Railway united the system's American lines. For two generations the road's South Bend life was lived at street level: west of Michigan Street its trains ran down Division Street — later Western Avenue — past its passenger and freight depots between the river bridge and General Taylor Street, a main line in the roadway until the elevation of the 1920s lifted it, the fight for which has its own entry below.

The elevation works gave the road its surviving monument: the concrete-and-steel Grand Trunk bridge across the St. Joseph River at the foot of Howard Park, erected in 1929. Its named Chicago–Toronto trains through South Bend were the International Limited, the Maple Leaf, the Inter-City Limited and The LaSalle; the Mohawk of 1967 ran Chicago–Detroit. Grand Trunk passenger service ended on 30 April 1971, when its intercity trains passed to Amtrak — which did not continue a Chicago–Toronto train through South Bend. The freight line endures: the Interstate Commerce Commission's own report of 1932 already calls this trackage the South Bend Subdivision, and Canadian National's South Bend Subdivision it remains, Battle Creek to Griffith across the north side of the city's rail map.

Sources:

1. Grand Trunk Western Railway Co. v. City of South Bend, 227 U.S. 544 (1913) — the 1866 Indiana charter, the city's stockholding, the 1868 ordinance and its Division Street terms, the single track of 1871, and the 1881 strip for a second track, from the Supreme Court's own recital of the record.
2. East Bank Ink, drawing on National Park Service material — the line's first operation as the Chicago & Lake Huron, its passage to the Grand Trunk of Canada by 1879, and the 1929 concrete-and-steel bridge at the foot of Howard Park as part of the elevation.
3. Interstate Commerce Commission report of 1932 — the Grand Trunk's line here as the "South Bend Subdivision of the Chicago Division," Battle Creek to Griffith, 140.56 miles.
4. The Grand Trunk Western's timetable record — the International Limited, Maple Leaf, Inter-City Limited, LaSalle and Mohawk on the Chicago–Toronto and Chicago–Detroit runs, and the end of the road's own passenger service on 30 April 1971.