North Judson, IN

North Judson started as Brantwood, a town platted in 1859 less than a mile from the present center. The post office took the North Judson name in 1860, and four major rail lines later met here: Erie, Pennsylvania Railroad, Chesapeake and Ohio, and New York Central. The Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum now works out of that former junction, with vintage trains running through the old rail landscape and toward English Lake at the Kankakee and Yellow Rivers. State Roads 10 and 39 still cross town, but the railroad is the real local shorthand. North Judson is a place where a junction became a working museum and kept the rail story moving.