The public era: NICTD and the freight split

1977–PRESENT · THE DISTRICT

The line's rescue was an act of the Indiana legislature, and its final form is two railroads on one track: In 1977 the Indiana General Assembly established the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District — NICTD — to subsidize, and then to own, the passenger service. The railroad itself was sold on 28 September 1984 to the Venango River Corporation, whose 1989 bankruptcy forced the settlement that still governs the line: passenger operations passed to NICTD on 29 December 1989, NICTD purchased the track in December 1990, and the freight side continued as a new Chicago South Shore & South Bend Railroad under Anacostia & Pacific — a diesel short line running under the district's wires. Electric freight, a South Shore signature since the Insull years, had already ended: the last electric freight trip ran on 31 January 1981, behind motor 803. The passenger's South Bend geography moved once more in 1992: the airport station was dedicated on 20 November 1992 and the terminus moved to it the next day, 21 November, from the 1970 Amtrak station — a $1.8 million station joining rail to the airport terminal, over an extension built on a former freight spur along Bendix Drive, at the price of a slow approach. The New Carlisle flag stop, a survivor from the line's first years, closed in 1994. The airport took the name Michiana Regional Transportation Center in the 1992 arrangement and reverted to South Bend Regional Airport in 2000; the station's own name followed the airport's, and it is today's South Bend International Airport station.

Sources:

1. The South Shore Line's compiled corporate record and the Middleton chronology — NICTD's establishment in 1977, the Venango River purchase of 28 September 1984 and its 1989 bankruptcy, the passenger operations' passage to NICTD on 29 December 1989, the track purchase of December 1990, the freight continuation under Anacostia & Pacific, and the last electric freight trip of 31 January 1981.
2. South Bend International Airport station's compiled record — the station's dedication on 20 November 1992, its $1.8 million cost, the airport's 1992 Michiana Regional Transportation Center name and its 2000 reversion, and the planned west-side replacement.
3. South Bend station's compiled record — the terminus's move from the Amtrak station to the airport on 21 November 1992, and the New Carlisle flag stop's closing in 1994.