its freight and passenger traffic rise to record levels, in part due to the railroad serving important military facilities: the Army's Fort Sheridan just north of Highwood, and the Navy's Great Lakes Naval Training Station, just south of North Chicago. North Shore saw its traffic increase to the extent that the railroad was forced to borrow equipment from the Chicago Rapid Transit Company and fellow interurban Chicago Aurora and Elgin Railroad, both former Insull properties. Wartime earnings were high enough that the railroad's bankruptcy trustees were able to pay some of the company's outstanding debt and submit a reorganization plan. After the plan was approved, a new corporation (with a different corporate name from before) assumed the property in 1946. The failure to resolve a wage dispute taken to the National Mediation Board in 1948 led to a 91-day work stoppage that spring. The dispute was resolved by increasing both fares and wages, though the company's employees continued to earn less than their counterparts at other area railroads. Simultaneously, a decline in rail travel began as initial postwar shortages of automobiles ended. These national trends—coupled with the lost revenue from the three-month strike and the effects of the strike-settling wage increase—created serious passenger revenue losses for the line. In 1949, the railroad sought to curtail some of its more unprofitable services. Dining car service (other than that on the Electroliners) was dropped, service (particularly on the Shore Line) was reduced, and the railroad applied unsuccessfully to drop Shore Line service altogether. When the franchise held by the North Shore subsidiary operating streetcar service in Waukegan expired in 1947, the company felt that a renewal was not justified, the company replaced its city operations there with bus service. Shore Line trains that used the streetcar tracks to reach downtown Waukegan were simultaneously cut back to allow the tracks to be abandoned. The subsidiary city streetcar service in Milwaukee was discontinued in 1951 but the tracks remained, as they was used by main line services to access the North Shore's Milwaukee terminal. Right-of-way and trackage between Leland Avenue in Chicago and Linden Avenue in Wilmette was sold to the CTA in 1953, though the Shore Line continued to operate. In turn, the railroad received $7 million USD in CTA revenue bonds. The railroad repeated its petition to abandon the Shore Line in 1954. Though rush hour traffic levels remained strong, off-peak ridership