Where Notre Dame Football Specials Trains Used to Run-Norfolk Southern Line-1318 Woodward Avenue South Bend IN-November 21 2005

            Continuing my series from earlier this week. 

This view looks southwest along the Norfolk Southern line which though not officially abandoned was paved over at this grade crossing and others by an overly zealous City of South Bend that wanted the ROW for utility lines and a bike trail. 

The car on the trailer appears to be a 1941 Studebaker Commander built right in South Bend. 

At the date this photo was taken this line was in play as Bob Harris attempted to revive service on its as the South Bend Railway shortline despite fierce opposition from the city, Holy Cross College, and St. Mary's College. He was successful at the STB but ultimately gave up and the line is now the Coal Line Trail. 

At one time this line was the busy New York Central Michigan Connecter which connected the NYC mainline to Chicago with Niles, Michigan. Into at least the 1950s charter trains carried football fans to Notre Dame over this line. Trains would lay over at either ND or the adjacent St. Mary's College campus to be cleaned, provisioned and await the return trips while the games took place. 

The bridge in the distance over Portage Avenue replaced an earlier wooden trestle that carried both vehicles and streetcars of the Northern Indiana Railway up into 1940. 

In its final years of operation in the 1990s it was used by Conrail to deliver coal to Notre Dame. Once NS took it over NS forced ND to truck coal to campus from a transload facility on the southwest side of South Bend. 

Rescan of an earlier print at much higher resolution and quality.

Taken on: February 8, 2025

Tags:

South Bend

Michigan Central

Indiana

Conrail

Norfolk Southern

railroad « less

Sets appears in: • South Bend Railroad, Interurban, Streetcar and Other Historic Photos

Camera: Canon CanoScan 9000F Mark II (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon CanoScan 9000F Mark II
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Elements 16.0 (Macintosh)
Show full info

Stats: 547 views / 1 comment

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder