Project Scroll Research Note 2026-57: No trains to Shipshewana from April 1975 to June 1979: the embargo on the Penn Central branch and the Indiana Interstate Railway

The usual account has a federal subsidy keeping the Goshen–Shipshewana branch running from 1976. The Federal Register shows that the trains had stopped. An embargo on all traffic over the branch, "effective April 21, 1975," followed the Penn Central's stopping all operations "because of unsafe track conditions," and "Rail service had not been resumed as of December, 1976." Service came back in 1979, after the State of Indiana leased the line from the Penn Central Corporation: the Interstate Commerce Commission's Service Order 1381, decided 12 June 1979, authorized the Indiana Interstate Railway to operate between Goshen and Shipshewana from 11:59 p.m. on 15 June 1979, noting that service had been "discontinued for several years." The county history of 1982 records for 1979 that "The first freight begins to move on the Pumpkin Vine Line between Shipshewana and Goshen." Project Scroll Research Note 2026-57, version 1. The note sets out the record quoted, where it is held, what it changes, its limits, and what was searched before calling it new. Web version: projectscroll.com/discoveries/notes/2026-57/.