The electric system whole: companies, consolidation and the line map

1890–1930 · THE ELECTRIC ERA

Electrification, route by route: When electricity came back to South Bend it came to stay, and it came line by line. ChicagoRailFan's route record, compiled from the company's own succession, gives the order: the Washington line and the North Side line to Mishawaka were electrified in 1890, Portage in 1891, the North Michigan and Chapin lines in the course of the 1890s, and the South Side line to Mishawaka — rebuilt, as the next paragraph tells — in 1895. The horse-car plant was gone by the middle of the decade; what replaced it was a single growing electric property assembled by merger. In 1894 the General Power & Quick Transit Company was formed to build a new South Side Mishawaka line, replacing an original line that had been poorly constructed while rushed into service; the new line opened in 1895 with large double-truck passenger cars operated in two-car trains — a scale of equipment that makes the intercity line, in the Northern Indiana history's judgment, one of the earlier interurban-style operations in the country. In 1898 the General Power & Quick Transit merged into the South Bend Street Railway Company. In 1899, after a receivership, the South Bend & Mishawaka company was consolidated with the South Bend Railway to form the South Bend & Mishawaka Railway, and the lines were then partly electrified, the rest following.

One property, two names: By December 1905 all the lines were electrified and under one hand, and on 14 December 1905 — Marlette's appendix gives the day — the property was merged into the Northern Indiana Railway. In 1907 a financial group headed by the Murdock family took over, and the corporate name became the Chicago, South Bend & Northern Indiana Railway — Marlette's statistics fix the succession as of 25 January 1907 — although, as the CERA history notes, the property was always known locally by the shorter and more accurate "Northern Indiana" name. Under that name, in its two spellings, the company ran South Bend's streetcars for the rest of the electric era, and its interurban lines besides — to Goshen, to La Porte and Michigan City, and through its Southern Michigan affiliate to St. Joseph — which are the Trains section's to tell. What belongs here is the city system the interurban company carried inside itself. The company was reorganized in 1930, out of the receivership years, as the Northern Indiana Railway, Inc., the name under which the streetcars ended and the buses began.

The line map at its extent: The documented measure of the city system at its maturity is Marlette's statistical compilation of 1921: the Chicago, South Bend & Northern Indiana then held 125.2 miles of line in all, of which the South Bend city lines accounted for 36 miles — Mishawaka's city lines 3 miles, Elkhart's 9, Goshen's 4 and Michigan City's 6 standing in the same table as the other cities of the one property, and the interurban lines to Michigan City (40.8 miles) and Goshen (25.9) making up the rest. The city lines themselves, as the route record names them at the end of the streetcar era, radiated from the downtown crossing of Washington and Michigan: Washington (the first line of 1885, running west toward the Bendix works), Portage to the northwest, North Michigan, Lincolnway West toward the airport ground, Sample to the southwest, South Michigan, Miami to the southeast, Chapin on the west side, Notre Dame up Notre Dame Avenue to the university, and the two Mishawaka lines — North Side and South Side — with the Madison line across the river in Mishawaka besides. One early line did not survive to be counted: the Lafayette line, opened with electric operation in 1890, was abandoned in 1898. Fifteen named streetcar routes stand in the route record across the system's life; twelve of them, plus the Madison line in Mishawaka, were still running to be converted or closed in the bus years. The streetcar suburbs those lines built out are the Communities section's ground; the lines' own record is this one.

Sources:

1. ChicagoRailFan, South Bend transit routes — the electrification dates by route (Washington and North Side 1890, Portage 1891, South Side 1895); the General Power & Quick Transit Company of 1894, its new South Side line of 1895, and the 1898 merger into the South Bend Street Railway Company; the Lafayette line, 1890–1898; the route names at the conversion era.
2. Central Electric Railfans' Association, Electric Railways of Indiana (Bulletin 104, 1960), South Bend narrative — the 1899 consolidation into the South Bend & Mishawaka Railway after receivership; all lines electrified and the Northern Indiana Railway of December 1905; the Murdock group and the Chicago, South Bend & Northern Indiana name of 1907; the 1930 reorganization.
3. Jerry Marlette, Electric Railroads of Indiana (1959), appendix and operational statistics — the merger into the Northern Indiana Railway dated 14 December 1905; the Chicago, South Bend & Northern Indiana as successor by purchase as of 25 January 1907; the 1921 mileage table (South Bend city lines 36 miles; system total 125.2 miles).
4. George K. Bradley, Northern Indiana Railway Inc., CERA Bulletin 132 (1998), published summary — the 1895 two-car electric trains between the cities as an early interurban-style operation.