Book Reviews
Title: None
Source: Trains Magazine
Reviewer: K.P.K Date: July 1999
Traction fans are familiar with South Bend, Ind., as the easternmost point on the famous South Shore Line, but for much of the early part of this century the city was also home to another interurban empire: the Northern Indiana Railway. The story of this impressive also-ran is expertly told in this new history by George K. Bradley, one of traction's most accomplished authors.
With some 103 miles of railroad reaching out from South Bend to such Indiana destinations as La Porte, Michigan City, and Elkhart, as well as into southwestern Michigan, the Northern Indiana was an important part of the Upper Midwest's traction network, Bradley traces its growth from a simple South Bend street operation in the 1880's to a system that would go head-to-head with the South Shore in the 1920's. Its heyday was symbolized by luxurious parlor cars, a brisk freight business, and a main line that paralleled its traction archrival (as well as the New York Central) for 12 miles west from South Bend.
The Northern Indiana was also an interstate operation, thanks to its 35-mile Southern Michigan Railway subsidiary. Bradley shows how this little-known line tapped rich fruit orchards near Lake Michigan shore and made use of lake steamer connections at St. Joseph. He also explains how the Southern Michigan's most notable feature--a three level crossing of the Michigan Central and the Big Four at Niles--was a manifestation of Michigan's peculiar state laws governing traction lines.
Alas, like almost all interurbans, the Northern Indiana began to falter in the 1930's. Attempts to stay afloat by restructuring debt and employing lightweight cars ultimately failed, and by 1934 the interurban operations were abandoned as the company shrank to its core streetcar lines in South Bend. But even the long lines of trolleys lined up outside Notre Dame's football stadium in the fall weren't enough to keep the wires humming, and in 1940 the streetcars gave way to buses.
Although some of the information and photos in this volume have been gathered together from previous, long out-of-print CERA titles, the bulk of this book exhibits painstaking new research and fresh insight by the author. Best of all, a smart design, excellent printing, and superlative maps and graphic, surpass even CERA's high standards. You don't have to be a fan of Hoosier interurbans to enjoy this fine book.
Title: Interurban line historian documents early rail travel
Source: The Goshen News
Reviewer: Bill Spurgeon Date: May 23, 2000
Can you remember when trolley cars clattered along Main, Lincoln, Eighth, Clinton, Fifth, Pike and River streets (and Indiana Avenue) in Goshen?
Did you ever ride an interurban trolley car from Goshen to Chicago, changing cars at Michigan Avenue and Washington Street in South Bend or in Michigan City?
Or did you ever travel south to Indianapolis via New Paris, Milford and Warsaw on the Winona Railroad, another electric line, changing cars at Peru to those of another company but for a brief time, perhaps riding a “through car” right to the terminal block from the Statehouse?
Well, as the old song says, if any of the above apply to you, then you're older than I.
This reviewer's Goshen experiences date to 1939 and later, and by then local city streetcars were part of history, and so was the Northern Indiana Railway, which (with its predecessors) not only provided intercity service to Elkhart, Mishawaka, South Bend and Michigan City but also owned the streetcar lines locally and in several other cities.
A new book by interurban line historian George K. Bradley deals with the era when city streetcar lines carried people to and from work, school, and shopping. For several decades, intercity electric interurban lines brought rural residents and agricultural crops into larger shopping centers and dealt the first of several ultimate death-blows to crossroads commercial and social centers.
Bradley's Northern Indiana Railway was issued as a “bulletin” of the Central Electric Railfans' Association (P.O. Box 503, Chicago 60690). But it's not “bulletin." A handsome coffee-table-scale hardcover book, with more than 240 pages, scads of photographs (black and white because that was available in the 20th century's early decades) and adequate maps.
CERA was formed more than 60 years ago to record and preserve the history of the numerous city streetcar systems and intercity trolley lines of the Middle Border states.
Northern and Central Indiana, with numerous small cities located not far from one another were prime candidates for electric interurban line development, and many were built. But they thrived for only a few years. Railroads continued to handle the bulk of freight, mail, and packages and the motorcar and paved roads finished most of the trolley lines off before World War II.
Goshen's first trolley franchise was granted by the City Council in the 1890s. Ultimately there were several lines.
One went east on Lincoln Avenue to Eighth Street and south to Douglas Avenue. Another headed south to Main Street to Burns Park, at the south edge of town. A third headed northwest on Main and Pike Streets, past Oak Ridge Cemetery and the Cosmos Soap Works (now the Goshen Bag Factory, a retail and crafts mall).
All were hauling passengers by the end of 1896 in this city of fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. The Northern Indiana line was subsequently built to Elkhart; the Winona came along in the early 1900s.
By 1934 all were gone from Goshen. The Northern Indiana dropped its Goshen city streetcars in 1929 and its intercity service five years later (although South Bend kept streetcars until 1940). The Winona dropped passenger service in 1934 and cut back to Warsaw/New Paris the same year, surviving as a freight railroad until the early 1950s.
Bradley's book documents all of this in detail, with adequate maps and photographs that are wonder to behold. The latter include many of the community life in the first half of the 20th century.
He also tells of the scheme in the early 1900s to build a direct trolley line from Chicago to New York. It would have passed through Goshen. The promoters were not able to raise the money, and only a few miles were built, near Westville.
George Bradley, who died of cancer recently, was well qualified to put together such a book. He did a similar one on the Indiana Railroad (which was Indiana's last surviving major intercity trolley line and ran its last cars to and form Muncie from Fort Wayne, New Castle, and Indianapolis in 1941.
A native of La Porte, he later was employed in public transportation in Fort Wayne. He also wrote a history in the 1960s of that city's fire department, as well as a 1980s documentation of its long-gone streetcar system.
Cities connected by the Northern Indiana included Niles and St. Joseph in Michigan and the Hoosier communities of Goshen, Elkhart, Mishawaka, South Bend, La Porte, and Michigan City.
In tracing the electric railroad's history in the area, Bradley also traces the social and economic changes that took place as sleepy small cities became major industrial centers, their downtown districts teeming with shoppers and entertainment-seekers (who could flag a trolley at any rural crossing.)
Ever ride a streetcar to a Notre Dame football game? Hundreds of people did in the days of Knute Rockne and for some years afterwards; a fascinating photograph shows dozens of streetcars lined up along Notre Dame Avenue after discharging their Fighting Irish fans, in a day when tailgate parties where not yet even a dream.
The Northern Indiana is full of detail. It takes into account the broader picture of changing demographics, economic pressures and the political intrigue that spelled the end of the interurban era for most of the nation. George Bradley had an interesting story to tell, and he told it well.
Title: None
Source: First & Fastest Magazine
Reviewer: Bob Johnson Date: Summer 1999
Mr. Bradley, following exhaustive research, has created an orderly historical exposition about a property which, to date, has enjoyed minimal attention.
In the infant years of this century at least three electric railways aimed at Chicago from the “Snow Belt” of Indiana. The Chicago, Lake Shore, and South Bend succeeded and exists today as NICTC/South Shore. The Chicago--New York Air Line, grandiose of plan oversold itself and its stock and expired, leaving only remnants of its grading (plus a huge earthen fill for the latter-day Indiana Toll Road). The Chicago, South Bend & Northern Indiana Railway spun about 110 miles of intercity rail east, north and west from South Bend without reaching Chicago. It provided local street railway service in its hub city and five others, left bittersweet memories of its existence and inspired photographers, model builders and students of history to record its life and passing. Its story, with at least references to the other two, makes a valuable addition to the railfan's library.
Familiarly called “Northern Indiana Railway” (or just “Northern Indiana"), the company had many antecedents, several titles and variously named successor transit agencies. The company met difficulties which plague public transit to this day. It faced crippling blizzards. Even moderate snowstorms presented difficulty when merchants' displeasure prevented salting or sweeping along street railway liens. Later, even ordinances forbad snow clearing lest private sleds, sledges, and cutters be hampered. The cars had to interrupt their lawful occasions to allow private transport to operate unchecked. In Michigan a statute prevented electric roads' accepting freight cars from line-haul systems except for their own use.
Stand-patters and naysayers abounded, including those in the hostile press. A South Bend paper stoutly asserted that electric cars would never work. Late in its history Northern Indiana faced a self-appointed transit improvement organization which, by the author's account, was more concerned with attempts to arouse public anger than with civic betterment. The public fought a cross-current, needing transit for its well-being and hating the agency which provided it. The company survived fires in car barns and in an office; it was forced into the used-trolley market more than once. When interurban service ended in 1934, city trainmen struck over the company's desire to transfer interurban crews to city operation, in consideration of their service and to utilize their experience. The last day of the interurban lines passed virtually unmarked.
Bradley's narrative traces the financing, construction and development of the system from its earliest operation before the Johnstown flood, when it may have been the first electric street railway on the continent. It once operated with St. Joseph River hydroelectric power. It ran its own steam plants, some in the days when output was measured in terms of the number of arc lights which could be powered from a plant. Early rail operations used the Van Depoele troller. A sidelight to Northern Indiana's use of that method is that Van Depoele patented the underrunning trolley and apparently donated its patent to the Sprague organization. Various challenges had to be overcome in building lines through nominally flat terrain. Many changes of management and managerial personnel marked the early years.
The author leads a procession of rolling stock past the reader, showing the small antiques which anchored the first operations. Some of the old four-wheel cares remained in service into the '30s, and a few stayed on as service cars until the end. Early light interurban cars were downgraded into the city service, which they provided well enough even though most ran as half motors. Fires compelled the company to seek obsolescent off-line replacements, mainly from Cleveland. Some rolled in on their own wheels. Despite their evident age, these cars were maintained well, operating smoothly and (at least by Chicago standards) quietly throughout their long lives. Tiny “safety” cars amplified the fleet, perhaps about the time of the “jitney-bus” rage--or outrage. One order of new eight-wheel motors came from St. Louis, and toward the end, another from Cincinnati. These last served well enough to be sold to Virginia Electric Power Company after 1940.
From junior interurbans the company progressed to the Robertson cars built for the Southern Michigan extension, and then to the group of Cincinnati classics which dominated the system until the tidy little 351 series came from Cummings. That set, well chosen by the Northern Indiana, later became the 90 series on the Indiana Railroad and operated in a long-line service in which it was less than ideally suited. Nonetheless, it was series superior in many characteristics to the lightweight interurbans common on most surviving systems of the day.
After learning the science of through-routing on in-town lines, NI put it to practice on interurban routes. St. Joseph and Michigan City trains, operating on approximately two hour headways could mesh on the Elkhart-Goshen route to maintain near-hourly service. Little if any regular through service beyond Goshen was known, although connecting trains to Peru and Indianapolis were available. Off-line merchandise trailers were exchanged. Northern Indiana had a least one carload freight customer in South Bend, and locomotive 1000 gave straight-away service. NI offered less-than carload service to various points, and freight trailers were set off and pulled by daily merchandise dispatch motors.
In all, Northern Indiana Railway lived out its life well without really shooting itself in the foot. Its intercity service succumbed to the private automobile and its city service to economic pressures, hastened by clamor from the press and merchants, who regarded streetcars as “old fashioned” and buses as “modrun." Perhaps a different attitude would have prevailed but for that oddly antique livery which distinguished the South Bend cars. To some observers it seemed to emphasize the senior-citizen status of much equipment.
Mr. Bradley might have made readers smile had he described less seriously certain events. Some passengers alighted from stalled interurbans to push them to safety, for example. Once on the Michigan City line a car overran wire's end (but not track's end) to founder on a downgrade and defy human assistance. The solution could have inspired a Laurel and Hardy scene: A friendly farmer supplied a length of barbed wire. One may visualize Ollie and Stan dancing away from the hot wire and from the fat electric arcs which resulted when it inevitably grounded and burned through. ("Here's another fine mess...')
This book, author Bradley's third effort for CERA, weighs in at a solid three pounds. It sports a traction-orange binding with a rather large gold-stamped reproduction of the interurban herald. Reading is heavy and dull in some places, where the essential reciting of corporate history predominates. Overall, the book is a classy print job, though, executed on heavy coated paper with crisp typography. Few errata appear--none so egregious as the retitling of a Massachusetts city as “Worchester." Not everyone will approve of the format of the foldout maps, which cover South Bend-Mishawaka and the interurban system, both greater on east-west axes than on north-south, but terrain dictated cartography. The lavish illustrations present great value, showing towns and cities as they were when not every placed resembled every other place, the urban scene was not totally crowded with autos, and the Model T dominated even the home of Studebaker.
Noting the one experimental Air Line trip from Hammond through to South Bend, might one visualize a large Cincinnati interurban stirring the chatts along Indianapolis Boulevard in a trip to or from that city? No.
Copyright 1999 Shore Line Interurban Historical Society. Book review from First & Fastest magazine reproduced on this site by permission of Shore Line
Title: None
Source: Railroad History (Magazine of the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society)
Reviewer: George W. Hilton Date: Spring 2000
The Central Electric Railfans' Association pursues the unusual--in my experience, unique--policy of issuing bulletins on individual electric railways, then reverting to them for successively more intensive treatment. In 1953 it issued a paperback bulletin of 52 pages, The Northern Indiana Railways, by George K. Bradley, and 45 years later, with a minor change in title, it has issued a hardbound book of 244 pages by the same author. However eccentric such a policy might appear, it has produced many an excellent volume.
The book at hand is an exhaustive account of what was basically the street railway of South Bend-Mishawaka. In the peak years of interurban building early in the century, it extended interurban lines to Elkhart and Goshen on the least and La Porte and Michigan City on the west, operating smaller street railways in each of them. A subsidiary, the Southern Michigan Railway, ran north to Niles and St. Joseph, Michigan, but it did not run streetcar lines; it entered St. Joseph on the local street railway in the twin cities of St. Joseph-Benton Harbor. The history was consistent with the experience of the industry in car design, finances and ridership. The interurbans were axed in 1934, along with those of the smaller streetcar operations that had not been discontinued earlier. The street railway in South Bend-Mishawaka lasted to 1940. Bradley accepts the trends operating against the system as inevitable, but he believes that survival on the streetcar lines in South Bend through World War II would have been desirable.
The late David P. Morgan once observed that historians of the electric railways had their steam-railroad counterparts backed into a blind siding in the quality of their work. There is every reason why this should be so. Electric lines were typically small in scope and limited in duration. They typically left large number of old employees and officers. Even accepting Morgan's logic, this is an exceptionally impressive volume. Because Bradley began his scholarship for the pamphlet of 1953, his research ran over an exceptionally long period. In addition, his lifelong familiarity with South Bend and its transit lines. It seems very unlikely an author undertaking such a history afresh in the 1990s could have done as thorough and impressive a job as this.
Copyright 2000 by the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society
Title: None
Source: National Railway Bulletin, Vol. 65, No. 4
Reviewer: J.N.J.H. Date: 2000
In 1953, the late George K. Bradley began his prolific writing career by publishing a study of the Northern Indiana Railway. It is fitting that 45 years later, the Central Electric Railfans' Association should publish what proved to be his final work, a much more detailed and comprehensive history of the property. In copious detail and well-written prose, Bradley describes the creation, expansion, maturation, and ultimate decline and abandonment of an electric railway system centered on South Bend in northern Indiana, and whose lines radiated to the east to Elkhart and Goshen, to the west to La Porte and Michigan City and to the north to Niles and St. Joseph, Mich.
Bradley has adopted a combined topical-chronological approach. The book is divided into four sections, each dealing with one of the major areas served by the company: South Bend and Mishawaka, the Elkhart County Street Railway, the Southern Michigan Railway, and the La Porte and Michigan City lines. Within each section, he offers a detailed, chronological account of the evolution of that particular operation. In effect, he provides four books in one, on companies which eventually became part of the Northern Indiana Railway. In addition to its city lines in South Bend and its interurban liens, the company also operated local service in Goshen, Elkhart and Michigan City. The greatest attention, properly, is devoted to South Bend, where electric service began, briefly, in 1885, and where he carries the story past the 1940 abandonment of rail service to the present day, and the bus lines operated by the South Bend Public Transportation Corp. Local streetcar service ended in Goshen in 1928 and in the other towns by 1934, when the interurban lines were also abandoned. Buses gradually replaced streetcars in South Bend during the 1930's, but the company's planned orderly phase-out of rail service was hastened by political pressure, which saw the last electric car run in 1940.
Each chapter is supplemented by scores of photographs showing the lines as they changed through the years. The cars were maintained in top-notch condition to the very end. Reproduction is excellent, and the views are sharp and clear. A number of well-drawn maps show the city routes and the interurban lines. Bradley offers decided judgments on the problems which confronted the company and the hostile forces, often political, which hampered its operations. Detailed appendices cover the South Bend routes, the carbarns and the rolling stock and rosters. There are timetable and transfer reproductions, and several pages of car drawings. Layout, design and overall production are up to the usual high standards of CERA.
This book is a fitting tribute to life-long efforts of George Bradley to present the story of the electric railway in a clear, accurate and readable style. It is nice to know that he lived long enough to see its release and the acclaim it has won. All students of electric railways and urban transportation will want to add this volume to their collections.
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