Michigan City street rail (#0099)

The real reason I had stopped in Michigan City – to see a section of residential city street shared with rail service. It used to be relatively common to see streets that were both auto and rail in the U.S., but such has largely disappeared. I knew about this street/rail combination from having seen it on other Flickr accounts. Note that I haven’t seen any explanation as to why this situation remains while it has disappeared in much of the rest of the country.

The train here is the South Shore Line commuter train that runs from Chicago to South Bend; looking at the train schedule there’s at least 30 commuter trains a day on this route. From the other pictures I’ve seen on Flickr, there are also freight trains that use these tracks, though I didn’t see any of those. (see adjacent pictures)