South Shore Line (NICTD) - Current Operations

Current Operations

The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway bought the line on January 3, 1967. The CSS&SB was one of six railroads with "long-distance" passenger services to decline joining Amtrak in 1971 and in 1976, they asked the Interstate Commerce Commission to abandon passenger service. The ICC gave the State of Indiana a chance to reply and subsequently, the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District was formed in 1977 to fund the service. When the railway went bankrupt, passenger service was taken over by the NICTD in December 1989. In December 1990, the track was sold to the NICTD and freight service was taken over by the new Chicago SouthShore and South Bend Railroad, a subsidiary of short line operator Anacostia and Pacific.

The main rail yard, shed and dispatching office are in Michigan City, with the corporate headquarters in Chesterton.

On November 21, 1992, an extension was opened from the old terminus at the South Bend Amtrak station to the South Bend Airport.

The railroad began a three-year project in 2009 to replace all catenary on its line between Michigan City and Gary, some of which was nearly 90 years old. The project cost $18 million, and caused service disruptions on weekends (five in August–October 2009, one in May 2010 and five more in August–November 2010) while new wires were strung. The 2009 and 2010 weekend outages truncated trains at Gary Metro Center. The plan for weekend outages for 2011 is to truncate service at Dune Park for ten weekends spanning from May through August. During the August–November 2010 disruptions Amtrak's Wolverine provided service to the Amtrak Michigan City station.