Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway Company.

The Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway System was formed in 1869 through the merger of four railroads: the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana; the Cleveland and Toledo; the Cleveland, Painesville and Ashtabula; and the Buffalo and Erie. These companies provided an unbroken rail route between Chicago, Illinois, and Buffalo, New York.

The Lake Shore's predecessor roads had, in turn, been formed through mergers of a variety of smaller lines, some of which were among the first railroads to be established in Ohio and Indiana. The Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana resulted from the merger of the Michigan Southern Railroad and the Northern Indiana Railroad in 1855. the Michigan Southern's antecedents included the Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad which was chartered in 1837. The Cleveland and Toledo represented the merger of the Toledo, Norwalk and Cleveland and the Junction Railroads in 1853. In 1854, the Cleveland, Painesville and Ashtabula Railroad, which had been completed in 1852, acquired the rights to a railroad between the Ohio State line and Erie, Pennsylvania. This road had been constructed by the Franklin Canal Company. The easternmost portion of the Lake Shore System was comprised of the Buffalo and Erie Railroad which had been formed through the merger of the Buffalo and State Line and the Erie and North East Railroads in 1867. Almost all of the railroads which came to constitute the Lake Shore System were the result of the great interest in railroad construction which characterized the American Midwest in the 1830s and 1840s.

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