While steam carriers dominate this story of American railroads, electric interurban trains should not be overlooked. The development of electrically powered intercity railroads (differing from urban streetcars) burst onto the transportation scene when a seven-mile “juice” line opened between the Ohio towns of Newark and Granville in 1889. Mileage spiked after the turn of the twentieth century, expanding from 569 route miles in 1900 to a peak of 15,580 miles in 1916. Ohio and Indiana became the heartland of the interurban, the former claiming 2,798 miles and the latter 1,825 miles. Most electric lines were usually relatively short, frequently seventy-five miles or less, although there were larger ones, including the Ohio Electric Railway, which sported more than 600 route miles. But with automobile, bus, and truck competition and the triumph of the Good Roads Movement by the 1930s, together with the impact of the Great Depression, interurban companies shut down one by one. By the post–World War II years, the surviving electric lines benefitted from interline freight business with non-electrics. By the 1950s most of these had dieselized. In 1960 the national interurban mileage stood at a mere 299.
The interurban literature is extensive, far exceeding those books that cover buses, trucks, and commercial airplanes. For decades, the Central Electric Railfans’ Association (CERA), based in Chicago, has published scores of interurban titles, aimed principally at the enthusiast market. Most cover individual companies, yet some deal with matters of freight operations, equipment, and related topics. One fascinating CERA publication is Thomas R. Bullard and William M. Shapotkin’s Faster than the Limiteds: The Story of the Chicago-New York Electric Air Line and Its Transformation into Gary Railways. This study reveals how interurban fever gripped the United States during the formative years of the twentieth century.
Scores of non-CERA titles exist, and there are at least two overviews of the interurban era. The so-called bible of the interurban industry is a work published in 1960 with a modest revision a year later by George W. Hilton and John F. Due: The Electric Interurban Railways in America. The other is a social history of the industry: Electric Interurbans and the American People, by this author. Representative of the major interuban histories are books that chronicle the ups and downs of individuals companies. These include two by Herbert H. Harwood, Jr.: The New York, Westchester & Boston Railway: J. P. Morgan’s Magnificent Mistake and, with Robert S. Korach, The Lake Shore Electric Railway Story. Others of note are Jack Keenan’s Cincinnati & Lake Erie Railroad: Ohio’s Great Interurban System; Thomas T. Fetters and Peter W. Swanson, Jr.’s Piedmont and Northern: The Great Electric System of the South; William C. Jones and Noel T. Holley’s The Kite Route: Story of the Denver & Interurban Railroad; Clive Carter’s Inland Empire Electric Line: Spokane to Coeur d’Alene and the Palouse; and the second edition of William D. Middleton’s South Shore: The Last Interurban. Many of these works have been written by amateur historians; professional historians have been less active. As with steam railroads, non-professionals have produced well-researched, thoughtful, and well-written studies.
There are also a few works on interurban car builders. These include Scott D. Trostel’s The Barney and Smith Car Company: Car Builders, Dayton, Ohio, and Lawrence A. Brough and James H. Graebner’s From Small Town to Downtown: A History of the Jewett Car Company, 1893–1919. Unfortunately, Cincinnati Car Company, a major maker of interurban rolling stock, lacks a book-length study. The interurban industry, which grew rapidly and faded away quickly, might have produced manufacturers of greater importance had it lasted longer.
