South Shore train on LaSalle Street in South Bend in 1967.
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SWEET!
The building on the left is gone.
The LaSalle Hotel building is still there. Apartments for artists. Very nice. Good lunch around the corner on your right.
The squarish tower over the train is still there. It’s the Saint Joseph Station. Interesting history Here:
ND-SB-04915 // Building South Bend // University of Notre Dame
The picture is looking east on LaSalle Ave. The stoplight is at Michigan Street. Main Street is behind the photographer. If you go east past Michigan Street, the road drops down a rather steep hill and then crosses the St. Joseph River. A block past that, the train tracks left the center of the street and veered to the left (north) just before crossing the East Race on a wooden trestle that’s still there over the East Race. Then the train entered the east yard, which was just two or three switches to short sidings. They ended at a dock on a freight terminal in a T fashion. So you could just step out the end door of the train right onto the freight platform.
The problem was, and this happened several times according to my dad, and as he took me to see once, if the train lost it’s brakes, it would roll down that hill right down the middle of the street, make the hard left turn, take out any automobiles that got in it’s way, cross the trestle, enter the yard, and slam into the dock at the end of whichever siding it was directed onto, causing some pretty harsh damage to the train and dock. Ouch!
Dad took me to several South Shore wrecks over the years. Mostly when it hit automobiles anywhere the train tracks would leave the center of the road and go off to one side. In winter, autos would try and beat the train on snow covered roads, their front tires would get caught in the gap between the pavement and rails, and due to the angle of the tracks being less than 45 degrees to the front tires of the car, instead of crossing the rails, they’d slide down the rails and they’d be forced into the front of the train and smushed. I remember a nice robin egg blue Studebaker with an mushed front end.
Since the trains only went about 10-20 Mph while in the center of the street, the accidents were rarely fatal.
Eventually they moved the station out of downtown out to Washington and Mead St. by the Bendix factory and removed the tracks from the centers of the streets.
To continue the tradition, we live only a few blocks from the South Shore tracks, and when two cars tipped over into the bushes about 20 years ago, I took my kids down to see it.
