Niles Vs Elkhart

[MQT1223]

Did some exploring around Niles the other day checking out the remnants of the New York Central in and around Niles. Besides the remnants that still exist on the still active Michigan Line, there is lots to see that has been left abandoned, neglected or in best scenarios repurposed. The roundhouse and ice house have all been repurposed to some degree, while the turntable sits and the Diesel Shops behind the roundhouse look a little worse for wear. It appears a brand new powerplant is being built on the site of the old yard which consisted of a hump. I did some measuring and the yard appears to be a whopping 3-4 miles long. On the north end of the former yard an overpass on a public road still exists to carry a road over the long gone yard.

Considering the size of Niles back in its prime and the importance of it as a major hub on the NYC for operations in and around Southern Michigan and Northern Indiana, what was the driving force to close Niles in favor of the "new" yard at Elkhart? I know at the time the NYC was starting to struggle financially and Al Pearlman was in the full process of cutting costs wherever possible to help bring the NYC back, but it seems like building a brand new yard while one already exists is the very opposite of cost cutting. Was Niles just that much out of the way that with the maze of former MCRR lines across Southern Michigan including the Michigan Line; that an efficient way to use Niles was simply out of the question?

Also looking for some good quality photos of the shops and yard, other then what is already available on the internet. A map of the main yard complex at its height to compare then with now would also be helpful.

[PatAzo]

If you look before the leaves come on you can find the hump as well.

Niles operated with brakeman riding cars down the hump and then making their way back up which was slow and expensive. Elkhart wasn't completely new. There had been a yard there for some time. Traffic on the Michigan Central was declining with construction of interstate highways. Pending expansion of the St Lawrence Seaway would cut traffic further. NYC didn't need and couldn't afford two hump yards. It put its money into rebuilding Elkhart and the Airline.

[MQT1223]

If you look before the leaves come on you can find the hump as well.

Niles operated with brakeman riding cars down the hump and then making their way back up which was slow and expensive. Elkhart wasn't completely new. There had been a yard there for some time. Traffic on the Michigan Central was declining with construction of interstate highways. Pending expansion of the St Lawrence Seaway would cut traffic further. NYC didn't need and couldn't afford two hump yards. It put its money into rebuilding Elkhart and the Airline.

So it wasn't a traditional hump in that it used friction to stop the cars? Why couldn't it simply have been upgraded? If traffic on the seaway and highways affected the Michigan Line so badly did it hit the Chicago Line equally as hard?

Was the hump on the north end of the yard next to the overpass?

[PatAzo]

Niles did not have retarders. They could have been added NYC didn't need two hump yards 20 miles apart. Elkhart was the logical choice.

There was a Trains Magazine article maybe 15-20 years ago that showed where things had been. I want to say the hump was near Korn St.

[DaveO]

2 humps which Korn Road was relocated to go under. Korn is now straight.
You can see the former humps on the current google aerial image.
https://goo.gl/maps/HUK7Q7RjEtcnXAke8

[Saturnalia]

Don’t forget too that the Niles yard never handled anywhere near what you’d think a hump yard would today. Several hundred per day, no more.

[SD80MAC]

Niles was also "off the beaten path" compared to Elkhart. Even back when there was a lot more rail traffic on the NYC in Michigan, it made more sense to send everything to Elkhart vs. Niles.

[PatAzo]

To put the Niles yard in prospective is was built in the early 20's when Michigan Central was a LS&MS/NYC competitor. As built it handled just MC traffic. You can find writers who say that by the mid-30's MC was finding the yard inefficient and were building trains that bypassed Niles. Move to the 50's and the MC has been merged into the NYC and NYC's excess capacity was just another nail in the coffin.

[GP30M4216]

PatAzo has it right on. Niles to me feels very akin to New Buffalo and Ottawa (near Erie) on the old Pere Marquette. Back in the days before mergers and consolidating, all of those yards were sort of the “intake” yard for their respective system. With PM eventually folding into C&O and MC joining into NYC, some facilities became redundant.

That Thompson Road bridge over the old Air Line departure yard is actually really historically significant, I think the only one like it in the state. Now it just goes over a somewhat overgrown field. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Robert R Young yard in Elkhart was strategically placed 100 miles out of Chicago to not only serve mainline traffic, but also Michigan Bound traffic via the Old Road/Air Line and Kalamazoo Branch, and what became the Marion branch heading down to Indiana’s interior. The classification bowl has 72 tracks!