A.H.C.: An electric railway network - in the American Midwest?

The 1890s-1920s saw the rapid growth of a new industry in North America - the interurban railway. A well-known definition of the term classifies an interurban as a railway that...
  1. Was powered by electric traction, with power delivered through an overhead wire and/or an electrified third-rail
  2. Focused primarily on hauling passengers (though many also hauled freight)
  3. Utilized equipment that resembled streetcars/trams but with higher capacity and speed
  4. Operated over a combination of city streets (often shared with local streetcars) and private rights-of-way
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Unlike modern passenger rail, which is primarily focused on moving passengers from city-to-suburb or city-to-city, interurbans typically connected cities and towns, running through large, intermediate sections of then-undeveloped countryside. The electric propulsion afforded interurban equipment the ability to quickly start/stop in populated areas or city streets, yet also reach high-speeds in the open, rural segments. They provided a cleaner, faster and more frequent alternative to the steam railroads of the day.

Within a mere three decades, the interurban industry had reached its peak, and from that point on it entered a gradual decline from which it would never recover. Several factors were at play in the death of the interurban. During the initial "boom" period, many interurban lines had grown too rapidly in areas where there wasn't a sustainable market for the service (they have often been referred to as the "dot-coms" of their time). As roads began to improve and automobile ownership became more common, the presence of large rail vehicles (sometimes including entire freight trains) in city streets gradually came to be considered a nuisance. Electric utility companies had built many interurban lines to spur residential growth, but the Public Utilities Act of 1935 forced them to sell off their transportation holdings - many of these lines were subsequently bought by transit companies who rapidly replaced electric rail service with cheaper, more flexible motor buses. The onset of the Great Depression saw the final attempts by the struggling interurban lines to regain ridership - smaller systems were consolidated and merged into larger networks, while faster, modern equipment was ordered and delivered. Unfortunately, these efforts ultimately proved fruitless.

The bulk of the interurban industry was wiped out in the economic despair of the 1930s. Those lines which managed to survive experienced a brief reversal of fortunes during World War II, as gasoline rationing led to a nationwide increase in train ridership. This was only a temporary reprieve, and most surviving interurban lines succumbed to the rise of the automobile and the construction of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s. The final "bustitution" of Los Angeles' Pacific Electric Railway in 1961 and the total abandonment of Chicago's North Shore Line in 1963 are generally considered to have marked the end of the "Interurban Era" in the United States.

Now that we've gotten the history lesson out of the way, here is where you come in...

With a P.O.D. that can occur as far back as the latter half of the 19th Century, your objective to have a state government or a collection of counties/municipalities, decide that these interurbans are a valuable public utility, and develop some sort of mechanism to either subsidize or directly assume their operations, ensuring that this network survives the Great Depression and the post-war "Car Culture". I do not believe that this would be possible at the national level, but I am curious if it can somehow be done regionally. It is a tall order regardless, but isn't the challenge part of what makes Alternate History fun?
 
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Well, there is the last surviving electric freight road that does interchanges with Class 1 Carriers in Iowa, since one other Road in Texas dieselized not too long ago
LINK
Still has Coaches, but generally only railfans charter it for a run from time to time, while the hundred year old traction engines keep shuttling boxcars and hoppers around town between industry and Mainline.

But you want something larger, yes ;)
 
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Don't have my streetcar / interurban references at hand so I'm winging this from memory.

To get things started, joining the Indiana Railroad and the Cincinnati and Lake Erie would cover much of Indiana and western Ohio. Not sure how much of a gap there was between the northwesternmost reaches of the IRR and the South Shore Line at South Bend, but assuming that gap is closed, you have a system that goes from Cincinnati to Chicago and on to Milwaukee via the North Shore. If the voltage on the oddball (Henry Ford strikes again) Detroit Toledo and Ironton were changed to more conventional 600VDC, you could add Detroit to the network. Close the gap from Chicago to Danville (IL) and you add the Illinois Terminal system, bringing in St. Louis. Given that the Illinois Terminal system got to Peoria, perhaps the Mississippi could be jumped to bring in CRANDIC (Cedar Rapids and Iowa City; pictured above) to get a good bit of Iowa.

Now things get tougher. Somehow you have to get eastward through Ohio either via Columbus and a whole lot of not much, or compete with the New York Central along the shore of Lake Erie via Elyria/Lorain, Cleveland, and Ashtabula on toward Erie (PA) and Buffalo (NY). It gets worse going northwest from Milwaukee, since there aren't major centers of population then between Milwaukee and the Twin Cities: Madison helps but it isn't a major city. Long story short, I don't think you'd ever really find a way to get a network to take in the Twin Cities or Kansas City--and Cleveland would be a long shot. The gaps are substantial. I also don't think that if somehow this system ever attained Cleveland, it would be feasible to get around the bend of Lake Erie to Buffalo with only Ashtabula and Erie between (and a lot of small towns) to generate traffic.
 
I do like where you're going with this, but to better clarify my O.P., either the Indiana Railroad or the C&LE on their own could qualify as a "network" (perhaps it was a poor choice of words). I'm simply looking for a way in which one of those larger, statewide, consolidated interurban systems could have become a popular, state-owned (or at least subsidized) institution sometime in the 1930s-1950s. That said, again, I am intrigued by your concept of a Midwest-spanning network, so don't let me stop you.
 
Wouldn't have any such publicly-owned common carriers then; those were still the heydays of privately owned rails. You probably wouldn't have public ownership until after it started falling apart, leading to local commuter lines for Cincy, St. Louis, Detroit, etc.

While I'm at it, I don't know of any similar networks in the east. The closest I could come offhand would have been the Connecticut Company (location obvious) or the totally unassociated lines in/out of 69th Street Terminal in Philadelphia: Red Arrow Lines and Philadelphia and Western (although the P & W joined Lehigh Valley Transit at Norristown, providing service as far as Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton.

I do know it was possible to travel by streetcar from Boston to New York in the '20s, with transfers and whatnot, but I believe that was the longest trip possible and involved city streetcars. A similar trip from New York to Chicago would have involved both city cars and interurbans, but a gap of about 20 miles in central NY was never closed. I don't think New York to Washington was ever remotely possible: large gaps existed in PA, DE, and MD.
 
In various rural areas you had interurbans that ran an early morning "milk run" (literally) that took milk from locations along the right of way to processing plants.
 

Driftless

Donor
Could this idea been used as an early introduction of rural electrification?

Rural electrification
United States[edit]
In 1892, Guy Beardslee, the original owner of Beardslee Castle, was paid $40,000 to provide hydroelectric power to East Creek in New York.

Despite widespread electricity in cities, by the 1920s electricity was not delivered by power companies to rural areas because of the general belief that the infrastructure costs would not be recouped. In sparsely-populated farmland, there were far fewer houses per mile of installed electric lines. A Minnesota state committee was organized to carry out a study of the costs and benefits of rural electrification.[22] The University of Minnesota Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, working jointly with Northern States Power Company (NSP, now Xcel Energy), conducted an experiment, providing electricity to nine farms in the Red Wing area*. Electricity was first delivered on December 24, 1923.[23] The "Red Wing Project" was successful- the power company and the University concluded that rural electrification was economically feasible. The results of the report were influential in the National government's decision to support rural electrification.

Before 1936, a small but growing number of farms installed small wind-electric plants. These generally used a 40V DC generator to charge batteries in the barn or the basement of the farmhouse. This was enough to provide lighting, washing machines and some limited well-pumping or refrigeration. Wind-electric plants were used mostly on the Great Plains, which have usable winds on most days.

In 1933, the Tennessee Valley Authority was created, in part, to provide rural electrification in the Tennessee Valley and surrounding areas. TVA created the generation and wholesale transmission capabilities that enabled rural distribution systems through electric cooperatives.

Of the 6.3 million farms in the United States in January 1925, only 205,000 were receiving centralized electric services.[24] The Rural Electrification Administration (REA) was created by executive order as an independent federal bureau in 1935, authorized by the United States Congress in the 1936 Rural Electrification Act, and later in 1939, reorganized as a division of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. It was charged with administering loan programs for electrification and telephone service in rural areas. Between 1935 and 1939 – or the first 4½ years after REA's establishment, the number of farms using electric services more than doubled.[24]
*Red Wing is about 30-40 mile's southeast of the Twin Cities.


Rural Electrification Act of 1936

The Rural Electrification Act of 1936, enacted on May 20, 1936, provided federal loans for the installation of electrical distribution systems to serve isolated rural areas of the United States.

The funding was channeled through cooperative electric power companies, most of which still exist today. These member-owned cooperatives purchased power on a wholesale basis and distributed it using their own network of transmission and distribution lines. The Rural Electrification Act was also an attempt made by FDR's New Deal to deal with high unemployment.

History
On May 11, 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 7037, which created the Rural Electrification Administration.[1][2] In 1936, the Congress endorsed Roosevelt's action by passing the Rural Electrification Act. At the time the Rural Electrification Act was passed, electricity was commonplace in cities but largely unavailable in farms, ranches, and other rural places. Representative John E. Rankin and Senator George William Norris were supporters of the Rural Electrification Act, which was signed into law by Roosevelt on May 20, 1936.
 
Wouldn't have any such publicly-owned common carriers then; those were still the heydays of privately owned rails.
I guess the idea I had in my head was to have some sort of a left-ish (at least economically) populist governor come into power during the '29-'41 era and decide that his state's failing interurban lines were too valuable of a public asset to end up scrapped. This, of course, requires overcoming a number of obstacles...
  1. Such a figure needs to actually exist and get elected
  2. Such a figure would also need to wield the influence to accomplish such an endeavor
  3. You would need to overcome the public aversion to higher taxes and "socialism" (Had the progressive/socialist movement in the Midwest already died out by this point?)
  4. You need to convince the public that an "antiquated" and "corrupt" form of transit is a valuable supplement to the increasingly popular automobile and newly modernized road networks
  5. In addition to automobiles, you also face competition from the steam roads, making the interurbans seem less necessary
I realize this is going to be difficult, so I'd hoped that an early P.O.D. would give somebody a little extra leeway.

You probably wouldn't have public ownership until after it started falling apart, leading to local commuter lines for Cincy, St. Louis, Detroit, etc.
In 1959-1960, the State of Illinois actually attempted to take over the Chicago, Aurora & Elgin Railroad for this purpose, but their efforts were defeated by #3 and #5. And that was a situation in which the Governor, a number or Mayors and the passengers all wanted rail service preserved. Suffice it to say, this is an uphill battle on a steep grade.
 
The problem of rail vs auto for commuting, even when rail can be effective, is that roads are subsidized to an extent well above RRs. yes I know rail got subsidies when initailly built in the 19th century, but those are long gone yet the road costs are still subsidized even on paid roads.
 
The big problem with rail is population density in areas outside of the NorthEast urban corridor. Even in the Chicago area the Interurbans would run into the is that the automobile is just too damn convienent when things are too spread out. Yes with the car comes traffic, sprawl, polution, and other issues. Yet do these things to some degree also follow the rails? I grew up in the shadfow of what is now Metra and the NorthShore. I remember the Electroliners. In fact I live maybe 4-1/2 city blocks from the old right of way. The NorthShore was killed by neglect, greed by sucking every last cent in profit, plus the compitition from the automobile. Metra (the old Chicago NorthWestern) only survives by subsidy. Yet every rider is one less car on the road. There have been various, proposals for light rail in the Milwaukee area that are always opposed by the suburbs. After all, if the people on the 'burbs can take the train into the city center. Then "those" people can take the train out to us! Yes racism is alive and well in 21st century Wisconsin.
 

Driftless

Donor
There have been various, proposals for light rail in the Milwaukee area that are always opposed by the suburbs. After all, if the people on the 'burbs can take the train into the city center. Then "those" people can take the train out to us! Yes racism is alive and well in 21st century Wisconsin.

That's true. Also, there is 21st Century resistance for both light rail and new multi-lane roadways for the "not in my back yard" reasons.

I think if the POD is early 20th Century, you get more interest for rural folks to gain access to the city for small scale goods(dairy, eggs, produce, etc) and from the city for excursions (i.e. Chicago & Milwaukee folks going to Lake Geneva, etc or Minneapolis residents to Lake Minnetonka and beyond.)
 
Another problem with rail transportation if one is commuting by rail is the work schedule vs train schedule. The farther the commute the less frequent the scheduled run. Work overtime or weather delay can see you stranded. Personally if I hae to go into downtown Chicago or Milwaukee I would prefer to take the train or park and ride shuttles. Unfortunately things don't always work out that way.
 
Another problem with rail transportation if one is commuting by rail is the work schedule vs train schedule. The farther the commute the less frequent the scheduled run. Work overtime or weather delay can see you stranded. ...

Locally this cripples bus use. For work commute the peak bus runs need to start around 5:30 am, 3:00 pm, and a lesser surge from around 9:00 pm. The actuality is if your work shift starts at 7:00 am you will never make there in time by bus, & if you end work at 9:00 or later it is difficult or impossible to get home. The local bus routes and schedules are suitable for getting folks to the shopping centers during the retail day, and thats about it. One of the two major hospitals here is 1500 meters from the nearest bus stop, the Subaru car factory 4000 meters. Until this year the state employment/work locating offices were 1200 meters from the nearest bus stop. Try that hike in July if you are diabetic, have had recent surgery, pregnant, over sixty.... & btw, no sidewalks.
 
Don't have my streetcar / interurban references at hand so I'm winging this from memory.

To get things started, joining the Indiana Railroad and the Cincinnati and Lake Erie would cover much of Indiana and western Ohio. Not sure how much of a gap there was between the northwesternmost reaches of the IRR and the South Shore Line at South Bend, but assuming that gap is closed, you have a system that goes from Cincinnati to Chicago and on to Milwaukee via the North Shore. If the voltage on the oddball (Henry Ford strikes again) Detroit Toledo and Ironton were changed to more conventional 600VDC, you could add Detroit to the network. Close the gap from Chicago to Danville (IL) and you add the Illinois Terminal system, bringing in St. Louis. Given that the Illinois Terminal system got to Peoria, perhaps the Mississippi could be jumped to bring in CRANDIC (Cedar Rapids and Iowa City; pictured above) to get a good bit of Iowa.

Now things get tougher. Somehow you have to get eastward through Ohio either via Columbus and a whole lot of not much, or compete with the New York Central along the shore of Lake Erie via Elyria/Lorain, Cleveland, and Ashtabula on toward Erie (PA) and Buffalo (NY). It gets worse going northwest from Milwaukee, since there aren't major centers of population then between Milwaukee and the Twin Cities: Madison helps but it isn't a major city. Long story short, I don't think you'd ever really find a way to get a network to take in the Twin Cities or Kansas City--and Cleveland would be a long shot. The gaps are substantial. I also don't think that if somehow this system ever attained Cleveland, it would be feasible to get around the bend of Lake Erie to Buffalo with only Ashtabula and Erie between (and a lot of small towns) to generate traffic.

Ohio may have had a bigger system than you think according to the following article:

"Toledo, which quickly developed into a major hub, was served by 11 interurban companies. Frequent service was available to Monroe, Blissfield, Metamora, Wauseon, Waterville, Bowling Green, Fostoria, Oak Harbor, Genoa, and other nearby towns.

Hourly or every-two-hours service was available to more distant cities like Cleveland, Detroit, Dayton, Cincinnati, and Fort Wayne. Even Put-in-Bay had a line - a mere 1.5 miles long, with eight trolley cars."
http://www.toledoblade.com/frontpage/2007/05/27/Toledo-was-hub-of-interurban-100-years-ago.html
 
Ohio may have had a bigger system than you think according to the following article:

"Toledo, which quickly developed into a major hub, was served by 11 interurban companies. Frequent service was available to Monroe, Blissfield, Metamora, Wauseon, Waterville, Bowling Green, Fostoria, Oak Harbor, Genoa, and other nearby towns.

Hourly or every-two-hours service was available to more distant cities like Cleveland, Detroit, Dayton, Cincinnati, and Fort Wayne. Even Put-in-Bay had a line - a mere 1.5 miles long, with eight trolley cars."
http://www.toledoblade.com/frontpage/2007/05/27/Toledo-was-hub-of-interurban-100-years-ago.html
Like I said, I was winging it. Thanks for the information. That could extend the network to Cleveland easily; going northeast from there to Buffalo, though, not so sure about.
 
It's a bit over forty miles from where I live to Union Station in Cincinnati. The light rail line up to the forties ran to within five miles of our village then. Freight and passenger trains ran on one of the three lines that ran through town back then, going longer distances. Deep down in Eastern Kentucky, rail lines were relatively (note the term relatively) plentiful back then. In looking at maps from the forties and earlier, there were many, many lines throughout the US, some lines even going to small villages that are (the rail lines) later abandoned.
 
If you're willing to let it be private instead of public, at least initially, a single large system like 1940LaSalle proposes might be coupled to a largish electric utility. You'd have to overcome the resistance on the political left to allowing a utility "monopoly" to grow too large, but the large company might provide a financial umbrella for the interurbans until such time as an intrastate agency takes them over. Maybe the ICC or FTC or somebody makes provision of interurban service a condition of allowing a merger of two or more electric companies.
 
It's a bit over forty miles from where I live to Union Station in Cincinnati. The light rail line up to the forties ran to within five miles of our village then. Freight and passenger trains ran on one of the three lines that ran through town back then, going longer distances. Deep down in Eastern Kentucky, rail lines were relatively (note the term relatively) plentiful back then. In looking at maps from the forties and earlier, there were many, many lines throughout the US, some lines even going to small villages that are (the rail lines) later abandoned.
I'll try to find where the article is but at one time I read that you can go from Maine to Iowa by Interurban which of course meant a lot of changes. SEPTA didn't close the Allentown to Philadelphia until late 50s early 60s,
 
In the upper midwest you could go most of the wat from Chicago to Green bay on an interurban, it could have been totally connected easily.
 
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