Insull: the line remade

1925–1933 · THE CHICAGO SOUTH SHORE & SOUTH BEND

Samuel Insull bought a bankrupt interurban and rebuilt it into the finest electric railroad in America, and South Bend got its share of the rebuilding: The old company went into receivership on 28 February 1925. Insull's Chicago South Shore & South Bend Railroad was incorporated on 23 June 1925 and bought the line six days later, on 29 June 1925, for $6,474,843. The South Bend passenger got the new regime's signature at once: the new downtown station at LaSalle and Michigan opened under Insull in 1925, and in 1928 it was enlarged to more than three times its first size, with a new freight station on LaSalle Avenue the same year. The electrical rebuilding reached the bend the next summer: the 1,500-volt direct-current conversion — the change from the old alternating-current system that let the line's cars run onto the Illinois Central's electrified Chicago terminal trackage on their own power — reached the South Bend–Michigan City segment on 13 July 1926 and the whole line by 28 July 1926, and the first through electric train from South Bend to Chicago ran on 29 August 1926. The line at its Insull height ran fifty-six trains a day, twenty-one of them limiteds. Dining and parlor car service ran from 20 February 1927 to the spring of 1932, an interurban offering what the steam roads offered. The fastest South Bend–Chicago time stood at one hour fifty-eight minutes in 1930 and one hour fifty minutes in 1933 — figures worth holding against the present day's, in the double-track entry below.

Sources:

1. Middleton, South Shore: The Last Interurban, and the Middleton chronology — the receivership of 28 February 1925, the Chicago South Shore & South Bend's incorporation of 23 June 1925 and purchase of 29 June 1925 for $6,474,843, the LaSalle and Michigan station and its 1928 enlargement, the 1,500-volt conversion's arrival of 13 July 1926 and completion of 28 July 1926, the first through electric train of 29 August 1926, the fifty-six daily trains, the dining and parlor service of 1927–32, and the fastest times of 1930 and 1933.
2. This build's Spine section — Insull's purchase of 1925 as the reorganization it was, not the line's beginning; settled there.