greyhounds Here's my favorite: https://www.amazon.com/Electric-Interurban-Railways-America/dp/0804740143/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1655519266&refinements=p_27%3AGeorge+W.+Hilton&s=books&sr=1-1&text=George+W.+Hilton The authors were both PhD economists. They not only explain what happened, but also why it happened. I tend to like that.
Here's my favorite:
https://www.amazon.com/Electric-Interurban-Railways-America/dp/0804740143/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1655519266&refinements=p_27%3AGeorge+W.+Hilton&s=books&sr=1-1&text=George+W.+Hilton
The authors were both PhD economists. They not only explain what happened, but also why it happened. I tend to like that.
I thought the second author's name rang a bell. John Due was a private University of Illinois. He gave several guest lectures on taxation in my Intro to Econ course. He actually made taxation interesting. A great lecturer, fine man who passed away in 2009
While South Shore is often revered as the "Last Interurban", it could be argued that it started changing from its interurban origins when it was purchased by the Insull interests. The passenger equipment as built was short (60-61 feet) but the height and width were of steam road proportions. The lengthening of about one-third of the passenger fleet during and after WW2 and the freight power upgrade to Little Joes and ex-NYC R-2's pretty much completed the change from interurban line to electric railroad. South Shore as it exists today is definitely not an interurban anymore.
The big Iowa interubans were built to steam road standards and could handle car load freight. Some lasted beyond their passenger hauling days, and converted to diesel-electric.
One still exists as a diesel-electric short line, the Crandic (Cedar Rapids and Iowa City) Railway. One still exists as an electric powered short line, more of a terminal switching company, the Iowa Traction in Mason City.
One, the Ft. Dodge Des Moines and Southern Railway was acquired, along with the Des Moines and Central Iowa Railway by the Chicago and North Western in 1968. Remnants of both still see freight service today.
Jeff
BEAUSABREFor many of the PSNJ routes, the wire came down, the tracks came up and the busses ran on the exact same route the interurban cars did.
And a LOT of NJ Transit buses STILL run on the routes of those long-ago trolleys!
Once in a while those trolleys get their revenge. Several years ago crumbling pavement exposed some long-forgotten trolley tracks, the edge of one ripped the tires on an NJT bus!
Public Service also had a line that ran along the border of my home town Paramus NJ. Called the "Hudson River Line" it ran from Edgewater to Paterson. Abandoned in 1938 in the early 2000's some of the tracks surfaced during road work. I've got a 6" section!
Man, am I glad I got Edward Hamm Jr's book "The Public Service Trolley Lines in New Jersey" back in 1997. A tremendous reference work it was a little pricey at the time, around $50 if I remember right. Those that have it now are asking ridiculous amounts of money for it! But they're all in there, from Edgewater to Camden!
For many of the PSNJ routes, the wire came down, the tracks came up and the busses ran on the exact same route the interurban cars did. The Public Service bus route through my hometown had been part of a Elizabeth to Plainfield interurban route and ran on the same streets. When I was growing up in the Fifties and Sixties, there were still tracks in the street in parts of Plainfield.
OvermodAs I recall, the Fort Lee to Tenafly trolley had cars at least that size, and would probably count as a "feeder" to Northern Branch trains.
That's correct. The line even terminated at the Erie's Northern Branch station in Tenafly. Without going into too much detail the line (The Englewood Line) was operated by Public Service but was cut back to Englewood in 1937 and then abandoned not too long afterward.
This is one instance of course, but according to E.J. Quinby the biggest competition the North Jersey Rapid Transit got was from buses beginning in the 1920's as the roads were paved. The bus companies played a little dirty, showing up at the interurban stops five minutes before the car was due to arrive and swiped riders. Long story short Public Service bought the bus companies and started abandoning the trolley lines, which is probably what the bus company people had in mind all along.
As I recall, the Fort Lee to Tenafly trolley had cars at least that size, and would probably count as a "feeder" to Northern Branch trains.
Most of these electric railways were fads of the period from the late 1890s to early 1900s, when the clear future was light, electric railways and the use of "hydrocarbons" to drive railcars was still in its very uncertain infancy. Even rudimentary buses of the early '20s were cost-effective 'competition' to many of the interurbans, which had enormous stranded cost and problems with maintenance far beyond what buses faced. But one of the greatest nails in the coffin came when utilities were made to divest their interest in electric railways and their traffic-generating amenities (such as they were).
How you'd compete with angle-drive monocoque diesel buses with even the most elegant Niles cars of 1911 is uncertain to me, though. GM produced a brochure in the mid-Fifties that is pretty compelling in the advantages -- and those didn't include larger or more luxurious buses for longer-distance regional service. (Which, in that era, may not have paid either...)
greyhounds Here's my favorite: https://www.amazon.com/Electric-Interurban-Railways-America/dp/0804740143/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1655519266&refinements=p_27%3AGeorge+W.+Hilton&s=books&sr=1-1&text=George+W.+Hilton The authors were both PhD economist. They not only explain what happened, but also why it happened. I tend to like that.
The authors were both PhD economist. They not only explain what happened, but also why it happened. I tend to like that.
I'll second greyhounds on this book, it does a very good job of covering the interurban industry as a whole as well as offering histories of individual lines.
The chapter on financing had some interesting comments about debt versus equity financing, stating that many companies might ave lived longer if they had relied more on equity financing and less on debt financing. Reason being is that debt financing imposes fixed costs that can be deadly during business downturns - something that came to mind when TCI was trying to get CSX to go more heavily into debt to buy back shares.
In upstate NY, the NYC operated an interurban electric service between Utica and Syracuse using West Shore trackage. It provided service to several communities between those endpoints that would not be practical on their parallel four track Water Level Route. So not really a competitive service but a complementary service. Lasted from about 1905 to 1930.
I know Sacramento Northern was owned by WP. It turns out that PE was in a cartel arranement with SP
"In May 1903, Huntington made an overnight trip to San Francisco and worked out an arrangement with Harriman. The Pacific Electric would get the Los Angeles Traction Lines, SP's San Gabriel Valley Rapid Transit Railway line, the 6th Street franchise, and some downtown trackage. In return, Harriman got 40.3% of PE stock, an amount equal to Huntington's, with Hellman, Borel and De Guigne owning the remaining 20%. Huntington could expand the PE as he saw fit, but he was not to compete with existing SP lines"
SP&S owned Oregon Electric and the New Haven owned the Connecticut Company.
I think we can safely assume they were not alllowed to compete with and served as a traffic feeder for their parent.
Another big line was Piedmont Electric, which was independent (I think owned by Duke Power) but was really more of an electrified regional freight railroad that used interurban technology
I am not enough of a juice fan to go deeper, but if you want a thorough thrashing on the subject, Middleton's The Interuban Era is considered definitive, the bible of interurban fans
The Interurban Era-William D. Middleton | eBay
It, along with his When Steam Railroads Electrified and The Time of the Trolley
are considered holy writ by juice fans, the only thing he missed were the els and subways
i don't know about other lines. But the Pacific Electric in California was more of a regional railroad like the present day Louisville and Indiana railroad. They served the same areas that the Southern Pacific, Union Pacific and AT&SF served. There was also a lot of interchange traffic from the railroads to the PE. In some cases the PE was a "neutral carrier" and allowed customers multiple options for long distance carriers.
Gramp Was there stiff competition between the two? Or did they really serve mostly different market segments of people?
Was there stiff competition between the two? Or did they really serve mostly different market segments of people?
A little of both really. Certainly interurbans went places the steam roads didn't, but when they did there was competition between the two, sometime friendly as in "Hey, this business is big enough for everybody and those trolleys don't haul freight!" to outright hostility from the steam road to the electric one. It all depended on location and the steam road's management.
In northern New Jersey where I'm from at one time there was an interurban line called the North Jersey Rapid Transit which paralled the Erie through a number of Bergen County towns. There was never any hostility between the two.
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