New York Central Elkhart Shops & Locomotive Terminal

This facility was originally planned during the Civil War by the Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana Railroad, but financial pressure kept them using two older, smaller facilities until the 1869 merger that created the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway, a company almost immediately acquired by Cornelius Vanderbilt’s New York Central & Hudson River Railroad. Vanderbilt became the first to create a one-railroad connection from New York to Chicago, bringing substantial capital that allowed consolidation of several smaller repair facilities into one large one. Steam technology of the immediate post-Civil War era now allowed for about 100 miles travel before needing to replenish water supplies; with Elkhart in the fortuitous location 100 miles from Chicago, the location where a stop was already required became an obvious one for a full repair shop. From 1869 to 1871, the LS&MS spent $374,000,000 (2018 dollars) to expand the existing roundhouse and added a second, with a total of forty-nine stalls between them, along with constructing a coaling trestle, large machine shop (then the largest of any building between Chicago and Cleveland), brass foundry, copper shop, tin shop, carpenter shop, boiler shop, with additional support facilities. The total area under roof came to 128,700 square feet. Besides complete overhauls of locomotives and other rolling stock, when necessary, the shops could construct a new locomotive from frames to steam in only six days. By 1899, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern (under its parent New York Central Lines) employed 2,324 workers in Elkhart, out of a city population of 15,184. Expansions to existing facilities from 1903-1930 saw a brand-new railyard, two larger and entirely new roundhouses, improved shop machinery and additional facilities added at the cost of $1,054,330,000 (2018 dollars).

By 1930, however, the increased size of steam locomotives meant that the original 1870 locomotive shops could no longer cope with the repairs, resulting in the heavy repair work being transferred to a newer facility in Cleveland, with the two Elkhart roundhouses handling the remainder of the slightly less-involved tasks. The large shops building itself was demolished in 1940, but the remainder of the small buildings supported the continuing requirements of servicing steam locomotives until the final retirement of steam by the New York Central in 1957. Both roundhouses were demolished by 1970 along with the majority of the remaining shop buildings; what remained of the latter was sold off to non-railroad business usage, with only a few structures remaining today.

Biographical Publishing Co. Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway System and Representative Employees. Buffalo, Biographical Publishing Co., 1900.

Butler, George W. The Manual of Elkhart. Elkhart, Ind.: Mennonite Publishing Co., 1889.

Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Co. 1870-1914 Annual Reports. University of Michigan Transportation History Collection.

McClellan, David and Bill Warrick. The Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway. Polo, Ill.: Transportation Trails, 1989.

New York Central Railroad Co. 1915-1930 Annual Reports. National New York Central Railroad Museum. 

Sprecher, J.M. & Co. Elkhart City Directory 1899-1900. Battle Creek, Mich.: Review and Herald Publishing Co., 1899.