RAILWAY AGE, MAY 2025 ISSUE: Chicago has one of four legacy regional rail networks, the others being in Boston, Philadelphia, and the New York area, including New Jersey. All except one of the lines that serve Chicagoland operate in Illinois as components of the Metra system. The sole exception is the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District (NICTD), better known as the South Shore Line. It has served northwestern Indiana for more than a century and continues to provide peak hour service, as well as relatively limited (but becoming more frequent) service at other times.
South Shore Memories
I have a long-lasting personal memory of the South Shore Line. I was an undergrad at M.I.T. in 1969 and was taking my first trip to Chicago on the Lake Shore Limited (not officially named at that time). My classmate Bruce Horowitz, who got me involved with rail for the first time and went on to have a career at Amtrak and major engineering firms, suggested that I get off at South Bend and take the South Shore Line into Chicago. I alighted at the old South Bend Union Station, which would soon be abandoned, and walked to LaSalle Street to board a train at the end of a street-running segment of the route to the Windy City, a segment that would also soon be abandoned. Since that time, I have visited several places along the route, from Hammond to South Bend itself.
The 90-mile route starts at Millennium Station, historically known as Randolph Street Station, at the east end of downtown Chicago, on Michigan Avenue. Electrified since 1926, it runs on the historic Illinois Central (IC) electric line, now Metra Electric, on the city’s South Side, and splits from the historic IC in Kensington, south of the 115th Street station, a stop discontinued in 2012. It goes through Hammond, formerly an industrial town that received some additional fame from short stories by Jean Shepherd, who grew up there in the 1930s. It then goes to Gary, a city made famous by steel mills and whose former downtown has been abandoned. In essence, it no longer exists, and the old Union Station is a shell. The South Shore Line and local buses still stop there. Further east, the line goes through more prosperous places, some of which are near the famous Indiana Dunes. That part of the line was recently double-tracked. Most service ends at Michigan City, where the line included street-running track along Tenth and Eleventh streets until 2022.
In Chicago, NICTD trains also stop at Van Buren Street (which sports much of its original 1926 appearance), McCormack Place on weekends, and 57th Street in Hyde Park, a historic South Side neighborhood and the home of the University of Chicago. Chicago riders are required to go to Indiana stations or at least as far as Hegewisch, the only South Shore Line station within Chicago and Illinois.
Interurban Start
The South Shore Line was historically the Chicago South Shore & South Bend Railroad, but it has served its namesake city in Indiana to only a limited extent since 1970. The downtown segment of the line is gone, and the railroad moved to an outlying area on Bendix Drive in the early 1970s. Amtrak moved its stop for the Lake Shore Limited to that location too, but the convenient connection is no more, since the South Shore Line moved to South Bend Airport in 1992. Neither location is convenient to downtown South Bend, and local bus service is not helpful for providing connections to the railroad. While the line could return to downtown South Bend some day and plans allow for that move; at this time it looks like a long shot. A local bus on the Transpo system is not a convenient means of taking city residents to or from the airport station, either.
Becoming a “Commuter” Railroad
The South Shore Line started as an interurban line built between 1901 and 1908, first as the Chicago & Indiana Air Line Railway, which became the Chicago, Lake Shore & South Bend Railway. Shortly thereafter, it got into Chicago’s South Side on the Kensington & Eastern Railroad to connect with the Illinois Central’s line going downtown. IC steam locomotives pulled the trains until that railroad was electrified in 1912. Samuel Insull consolidated local lines under the Chicago South Shore & South Bend flag in 1925 and changed the electrification to 1,500 volts DC to match the IC’s electrification system the next year. Some trains featured dining cars and parlor cars from 1927 until 1932, but the railroad had settled into its familiar pattern for the next several decades. The cars built by Pullman and the Standard Steel Car Co. remained in service until the 1980s, when the current Nippon Sharyo cars began to replace them. Norman Carlson, an accountant, railroad historian and former Chair of the Metra Board, has a feature article on the South Shore Line during the Insull era in the Spring 2025 issue of First & Fastest, a journal of railroad history in Chicagoland that he edits.
Until last year, the level of service had dwindled, especially since the end of hourly service to South Bend in 1970. The railroad’s historic nickname, the South Shore Line, remains in use, even though NICTD, a public agency, has owned and operated it since 1990. Today it serves 19 stations, but there were 40 more on the line in the past. Station eliminations were particularly severe east of Michigan City. Between there and South Bend, 14 stations were closed, and the only survivor is Hudson Lake. It’s halfway between Michigan City and South Bend Airport, although there are plans to reopen the station at New Carlisle.
Service is frequent during peak commuting periods on weekdays, but has been weak at other times, with off-peak service not running more frequently than every two hours until recently. The core service runs between Chicago and Michigan City, although there are some short turns at Gary. Service to South Bend (in the Bendix Drive days or to the airport today) was usually sparse, five daily round trips. Today there is more service. On weekdays, midday trains now run one to two hours apart, although there are still some two-hour gaps. There are now six weekday round trips serving South Bend Airport. The weekend schedule has increased, too. Instead of the former eight weekend trains with five to South Bend, there are now ten as far as Michigan City, and eight to South Bend, only about half of which have local bus connections to or from the airport on Transpo.
With the problems that the railroad faced from 1960s through the 1980s, riders expressed their concerns, mixed with hope for better times, as “The Little Train the Could,” a reference to Arnold Munk’s popular children’s book “The Little Engine That Could,” published in several editions starting in 1930. In the story, through sheer determination, a little yard switcher was able to pull a long train uphill to make the ruling grade on a mountain railroad. It demonstrated its determination by chugging “I think I can” repeatedly throughout that effort.
Recent Projects
After a long history of eliminating stations and keeping service sparse, the South Shore Line recently completed a new infrastructure project: double-tracking in the middle of the line and putting the finishing touches on a new branch that will serve several new destinations.
The railroad recently completed a project to move its tracks away from its street-running portion in Michigan City, which management had targeted to be eliminated as early as 2005, even though it gave the line some distinction, especially among railfans. The street-running service ended in 2022. Some residential and retail buildings on the south side of 11th Street were demolished, and the tracks were moved west. The new 11th Street station includes high-level platforms and a parking lot. As part of the upgrade, the Double Track Northwest Indiana Project added a second track between Gary and Michigan City (26.6 miles). Construction began in 2021 and was completed in April 2024. The project cost $649 million and the new schedules, with some added service, took effect last May.
The West Lake Corridor, as it is currently called, will head south by southeast from Hammond. Construction started in 2020 and included a new station west of the junction called Hammond Gateway Station. The new line is also called the Monon Corridor, because historically it was part of the Monon Route (officially the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville), now part of CSX. The new 7.4-mile line will have stations at South Hammond, Munster and Dyer, within walking distance of the Deyer station that now hosts Amtrak’s Cardinal on its tri-weekly journey to or from Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and points east. There might be a station in downtown Hammond in the future, and maybe an extension further south to St. John.
The Hammond Gateway Station opened last October, and current plans call for the rest of the branch to open this summer. Most trains will operate as shuttles between Hammond and Dyer, although there will be direct service to and from downtown Chicago during peak commuting hours. There is also a proposal to extend the new line beyond Munster (adjacent to Dyer) to Valparaiso, a college town that has such weak local transit that the only time there is access to visit from Chicago is on Saturday afternoons, with a bus from Ogden Dunes. Another proposal would extend the line past South Bend Airport to Elkhart, where Amtrak trains stop. There is also talk of restoring service at New Carlisle, a station that was located less than two miles east of Hudson Lake, and which was eliminated in 1994.
West Lake Corridor Proposal
Amtrak’s Cardinal runs between Indianapolis and Dyer three times a week in each direction on the historic Monon route. Between Dyer and Chicago, it is handed from one railroad to another. There was a train between Chicago and Indianapolis there the other four days of the week called the Hoosier State until Indiana’s state government eliminated funding, and it was discontinued in 2019.
Advocates at the Indiana Passenger Rail Alliance (IPRA) are calling for a new way to run passenger trains in Indiana, which would include bypassing Amtrak entirely. They propose the “Hoosier State Corridor” instead, which would host multiple daily frequencies between Chicago and Indianapolis, routes that could be extended to Cincinnati (part of Amtrak’s Cardinal route), Louisville, and even Nashville, if Kentucky and Tennessee were willing to help with funding. Instead of originating at Union Station in Chicago, trains would use the South Shore Line to Dyer and then continue on CSX’s historic Monon Route, as the Cardinal does today. NICTD President Michael Noland was not enthusiastic about the prospect of such a service, though, explaining that the line will be single-track with one short passing siding, so capacity for adding intercity trains would be problematic.
Noland came to the top job at the South Shore Line through the legal route. He had been General Counsel at Metra, so he is familiar with that railroad. He told Railway Age that he first rode the South Shore Line when he was a student at Notre Dame, traveling from a suburb on one of the C&NW (Chicago & North Western) lines now owned by Union Pacific and hosting Metra service.
Noland said that there are other projects in the offing for the South Shore Line. One is to move the airport station to the west side of the airport. “We’re going full speed ahead on that,” he said, and he’s not ruling out eventual service to downtown South Bend. He told Railway Age that access to downtown is now part of the railroad’s strategic plan. One suggestion he mentioned is running the main service to and from downtown South Bend, with shuttle trains to and from the airport. He also said that the railroad has good grassroots and political support, that its return is four dollars for every dollar invested, and the ongoing changes will improve “quality of place and quality of life” along the line.
Norman Carlson agreed about the current projects. He told Railway Age: “There is a very good future. Double Track Northwest Indiana was a catalyst for real estate development. Michigan City is booming and well on its way to recovery from its economic collapse in the 1950s and 1960s. From Michigan City north along Lake Michigan into southwest Michigan is now a very desirable place to live.” Regarding the airport move, he said: “To increase South Bend business, the new west side access is critically needed. To reach the east side of the South Bend airport the route is a big ‘U-shaped’ route with a series of curves and multiple grade crossings that result in a very slow speed, time consuming operation. Engineering, environmental work and financial applications are in process. In addition, the City of South Bend is pushing to bring the trains back to the downtown area.”
Looking Ahead
Noland acknowledged that the railroad will need new equipment in about ten years. Some of the Nippon Sharyo single-level equipment that replaced the 1920s-vintage cars was built in 1982, although some was built ten or 20 years later. There are also some bilevel gallery cars that previously ran on Metra Electric lines, previously part of the IC. In addition to possible future expansions to LaPorte, Valparaiso, and downtown South Bend, Noland said that there are plans to improve the historic IC Corridor between downtown Chicago and Kensington, where the line splits from it, south of 115th Street. He plans to spend $200 million for terminal upgrades and to improve the IC segment with full bi-directional signaling. That would give the Chicago part of the line the flexibility of a four-track main, rather than operating as a two-track railroad in each direction (not counting the non-electrified track that Amtrak’s Carbondale and New Orleans trains use).
According to Carlson, Metra and NICTD are cooperating on construction. He noted this example: “Construction is under way on Metra that will result in a fourth main track between 11th Place and Monroe Street, as well as additional midday storage capacity. Metra is responsible for this construction with a significant financial contribution from South Shore.”
Meanwhile, the South Shore Line also coordinates well with its freight carrier on the line, according to Noland, a benefit that “brings in some good revenue.”
Peter Gilbertson, President and CEO of Anacostia Rail Holdings, which owns the operator of freight services, agrees with Noland. “Our Chicago South Shore & South Bend Railroad (CSS) has enjoyed a good relationship with NICTD for years,” he says. “We were able to closely coordinate with the agency during its complex double-tracking project to keep critical shipments moving with minimal disruption. We have aligned incentives for growing the freight and passenger business in Illinois and Indiana. In our symbiotic relationship, NICTD has expanded capacity, and we have paid usage fees that have aggregated $120 million since 1990. Our recent initiatives include purchasing 100 new freight cars and joining the RailPulse telematics consortium.”
Noland also told Railway Age that he likes the idea of dual-mode equipment that can run on batteries for at least part of the route. He said the West Lake (Monon) Corridor is short enough that a train could complete a round trip on a single charge. Regarding current schedules, he said that on-time performance is improving, and that less recovery time is needed. There are a few additional runs on the schedule since the double-tracking project was completed, but the schedule is still nowhere near providing hourly service. “If there’s anywhere there’s demand for growth, it’s the weekend,” he noted. The weekend schedule now offers more service than it did in the past, but the level of service is still weak. Will there be more weekend trains in the future? Time will tell.
In summary, Noland said: “This is a sea change in our operation. It has been 100 years since we put this sort of investment in the railroad. I think we’re going to snag some of those drivers and get ridership up to 2019 levels.” He concluded by saying that he is “very bullish” about the South Shore Line’s future.
I mentioned the analogy to “The Little Engine That Could.” Today, the Indiana portion of Chicagoland has a railroad that went from offering fast and frequent service to bringing significantly reduced service to its riders, and seemed to get weaker from there. That isn’t the case anymore, as NICTD is making improvements and expanding the railroad to serve additional localities.
Like other “transit railroads” in the U.S., the South Shore Line (along with Metra and similar operations serving other cities) is about to face the challenge of the impending fiscal cliff that will make survival for those railroads, much less improvement, difficult. Noland acknowledged at a forum on March 12 presented by the Sandhouse Rail Group, an organization composed of rail managers and other interested persons in Chicagoland and affiliated with Northwestern University, that his railroad will be affected by the challenges ahead. Still, the South Shore Line railroad is showing determination and a willingness to invest in infrastructure that can lead to more and better service. It might well end up being “The Little Railroad That Could.” We’ll be watching.
