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1905 - Wanatah to Have a Station on the Winona Interurban Railway Company Branch

ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION WERE FILED FOR THE Winona Interurban Railway Co., in March of 1905, which had long range plans to lay track as far west as Valparaiso.

The Winona Company was organized after the Pennsylvania Railroad announced in 1902 that it would eliminate a siding that PRR trains had been using to take passengers from Warsaw, In., to the Winona Assembly at Winona Lake. Rather than lose the convenient rail service, the Assembly founders started the Interurban Company. At the height of summer, as many as 15,000 people a day rode to Winona. In 1900, when the PRR shuttle train was still running, it made 16 trips a day between Warsaw And Winona Lake. Transportation in those days consisted of bicycles, horse and buggy, and steam trains.

The Winona Interurban Railway was incorporated on June 12, 1905 and the articles of incorporation contain some ambitious ideas. They were going to construct railways from a hub in Warsaw to Goshen, Peru, Wabash, Fort Wayne, Columbia City, Plymouth, Valparaiso, Logansport, Rochester, Huntington, and Syracuse. Phase one called for the construction of the line between Warsaw and Goshen.

Instead of steam engines it was decided to use electric power trolleys. This required building many miles of transmission lines and catenarys, plus the building of generating stations.

The second phase was the construction from Warsaw to Peru that began in 1906. The Warsaw to Mentone segment was made operational in March of 1909.

The Winona was originally designed as a passenger railroad; however, freight service became the key factor in its economical survival. Less than a car load freight was its main cargo. The rail line served the same function that truck lines and parcel services do today. They delivered supplies and fresh produce to the small grocery stores along the route and picked up the farmer's milk for delivery to dairies. The Winona helped make Mentone famous for its egg production. Eggs were brought from farms to Mentone where they were loaded into Winona refrigerator cars located on a side track. When full, the Winona then interchanged the cars with the Wabash Railroad for the trip to New York for distribution.

By 1915, the railway felt the effect of the popularity of the automobile. Passenger revenues were going down. Government also became an enemy of the interurban by building more and more highways for automobiles to travel between cities.

With falling revenues from passenger service, the Winona never built the Warsaw to Valparaiso branch which had planned to have a station in Wanatah, or the east line to Fort Wayne. Although these lines were never built, franchises for them were secured.

Passenger service was available on the Winona line until 1938 and freight service which picked up even more ran until May 31, 1952. After the passenger service shut down, a private bus service was opened to haul passengers from Warsaw to Winona Lake, which was a three mile run.