Probably cheaper to maintain the bridges than replace them with new roadbed at grade.
besides the overpass gives a place for the vagrants to sleep out of the weather.:laughing:
We have more than our share of homeless people, but they are more in town. These bridges are out of town. And they built them all up above grade to go over the tracks that were at grade before the highway was there. It's kind of a whoopdeedoo road now with all the built up overpasses. And it's a high wind area to boot. They frequently have to close it when trucks, campers and manufactured houses get blown over up on the elevations.
The red arrow is a live track. The three yellow arrows are abandoned. They were live when the highway was built around 1970 and gradually were let go.
The yellow one on the right went between South Bend and Indianapolis. Took a lot of product from Studebaker and Kaiser Jeep (now AM General). Just to the right of the top of that right arrow is still an active AM General test track for on and off road testing of Hummers.
The middle yellow arrow used to be the NJI&I. It went about 8 miles south to tie into the east/west Wabash RR line. The NJI&I was built by the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Hard to believe that a sewing machine company was so large that it had it's own railroad, but they had 4 HUGE buildings and made all of their wood cabinets and sewing machines here in South Bend. They are one of the main reasons northern Indiana was deforested of hardwoods. There was that much of a demand for sewing machines.
New Jersey, Indiana and Illinois Railroad - Wikipedia
The left yellow arrow went to the southwest, over towards Kankakee, Illinois. I've given the history of that line before. Part of it runs through one of my properties and there's an old railroad trestle still there on the property. I remember trains on it until the 80s.
The red arrow was the former Grand Trunk Western, now CN. That comes from Detroit through South Bend, then runs SW and eventually turns back NW to Chicago.
