South Shore

South Shore or Southshore may refer to:

Places

South

South is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. It is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. South is the polar opposite of north and is perpendicular to east and west.

Etymology

The word south comes from Old English sūþ, from earlier Proto-Germanic *sunþaz ("south"), possibly related to the same Proto-Indo-European root that the word sun derived from.

Navigation

By convention, the bottom side of a map is south, although reversed maps exist that defy this convention. To go south using a compass for navigation, set a bearing or azimuth of 180°. Alternatively, in the Northern Hemisphere outside the tropics, the Sun will be roughly in the south at midday.

South Pole

True south is the direction towards the southern end of the axis about which the earth rotates, called the South Pole. The South Pole is located in Antarctica. Magnetic south is the direction towards the south magnetic pole, some distance away from the south geographic pole.

Roald Amundsen, from Norway, was the first to reach the South Pole, on 14 December 1911, after Ernest Shackleton from the UK was forced to turn back some distance short.

South Shore Line

The South Shore Line (reporting mark NICD) is an electrically powered interurban commuter rail line operated by the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District (NICTD) between Millennium Station in downtown Chicago and the South Bend International Airport in South Bend, Indiana. The name refers to both the physical line and the service operated over that route. The line was built in 1901–1908 by predecessors of the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad, which continues to operate freight service. Passenger operation was assumed by the NICTD in 1989.

History

Private operation

The South Shore Line was constructed between 1901–1908 by the Chicago and Indiana Air Line Railway (reorganized as the Chicago, Lake Shore and South Bend Railway in 1904). Revenue service between Michigan City and South Bend began on July 1, 1908. The Lake Shore leased the Kensington and Eastern Railroad on April 4, 1909, giving it access to Chicago. That year the full line to Kensington on the Illinois Central was completed, and beginning on June 2, 1912, the electric cars were coupled to IC steam locomotives and run to downtown Chicago.

Northeast Corridor

The Northeast Corridor (NEC) is an electrified railway line in the Northeast megalopolis of the United States. Owned primarily by Amtrak, it runs from Boston through New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore to Washington, D.C.. The NEC closely parallels Interstate 95 for most of its length, and is the busiest passenger rail line in the United States by ridership and service frequency as of 2013. Branches to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Springfield, Massachusetts, though not considered part of the Northeast Corridor, see frequent service from routes that run largely on the corridor.

The corridor is used by many Amtrak trains, including the high-speed Acela Express, intercity trains, and several long-distance trains. Most of the corridor also has frequent commuter rail service, operated by the MBTA, Shore Line East, Metro-North Railroad, New Jersey Transit, SEPTA, and MARC. Several companies run freight trains over sections of the NEC.

Much of the line is built for speeds higher than the 79 mph (127 km/h) allowed on many U.S. tracks. Amtrak can operate intercity Northeast Regional and Keystone Service trains at up to 125 mph (201 km/h), as well as North America's only high-speed train, the Acela Express, which runs up to 150 mph (241 km/h) on several sections in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Acela covers the 225 miles (362 km) between New York and Washington, D.C., in under 3 hours, and the 229 miles (369 km) between New York and Boston in under 3.5 hours. Under Amtrak's $151 billion Northeast Corridor plan, which hopes to roughly halve travel times by 2040, trips between New York and Washington would take 94 minutes.