do you know the story of that railroad bridge?.....old train line?........Jack
Yep.
For about 4 years, I had an odd hobby of getting on Google Earth at night, and following railroad grades, both active and abandoned, looking for railroad roundhouses and roundhouse foundations, and pinning them on Google Earth.... then reading about the RR, the town, the history, etc... then moving on to the next one. Well, when I was up to about 7-800 roundhouses, and googling the history of one, I came across a link to a RR hobbyist site and a forum and thread about others that had this same, quirky hobby of looking for roundhouses. So I joined that site and asked a few questions. One guy in particular was compiling a list of all the roundhouses in the world! So I asked for his list of just the U.S. and found that I had about 500 that they didn't have and they had a about 300 that I didn't have, so in that one week, we more than doubled the list for the U.S. :laughing: Anyhow, I think we were getting close to 1500 as I recall. I haven't been over there for about a year, so I have to get back and see how they were doing. Most of the U.S. ones were found be me (about 2/3), and I am quite proud of that. :thumbsup: Then some guy from Europe joined and added about 500 over there, and that's where they were concentrating next. Crazy bunch of oddballs following rail lines.....
So here goes with the history of that RR bridge on our place.
- It was New York Central.
- The area was known as Ginger Hill because of the soft ginger sand that bogged down Studebaker horse-drawn wagons heading west from South Bend.
- There was a siding called the Ginger Hill siding just to the south of that bridge (to the right in the picture), to allow trains to pass each other. The abandoned bed for the double track is still there, although when they took out the siding, they took out the
ballast, too, to use elsewhere. So there's the original grade with ballast, and a lower bed to the west of it, extending for about half a mile until it reaches farm fields where the farmers took it all out after it was abandoned.
- It was the primary line at one time going from South Bend, IN, to Zearing, IL., known as the Kankakee Belt, and sometimes the 3 I Line, as it was formerly owned by the Indiana, Illinois & Iowa line. It was a huge mover of grains from the midwest to the east. However, around the time of WWII, barge traffic took over moving most grains from the midwest to Chicago, and that was the beginning of the end for some of the sections of that line.
There were still trains on that section SW of South Bend when I was a kid. I think around the mid-late 70's they stopped running, and were ripped out in the 1983. We bought the property around 1989 and the tracks were gone. Sometime after we bought the property, the RR officially abandoned the easement, and ownership returned to the properties bordering it. Looking at the bridge picture, I own the land to the left and right of the creek, and the property line goes right down the middle of the old RR bed. So I suppose I own half the bridge right down the middle longitudinally. :laughing:
The county missed a great opportunity to convert it to rails-to-trails. It would have connected to a couple little towns to our southwest, and run about a mile west of a great state park southwest of here as well.
Here's the very interesting history of that line.
Kankakee Belt Route - Wikipedia
If you read it, and follow the links, it'll kill your afternoon! There's business treachery, (
MECHLING BARGE LINES v. US | FindLaw ) in RR VS water shipping, and a barge collision and bridgetender's death at a swingbridge! Interesting stuff! :thumbsup:
Look at the curving path on the left of this map...
The tracks are gone between South Bend, and Wheatfield, IN. However, in Wheatfield, IN, there is a HUGE coal burning power plant. The tracks are active to the west of Wheatfield over to Schnieder, IL, where they split. One branch goes straight north to Chicago. The other goes strait west to Momence, IL, where they split again to points further on NW, W, and SW.
