Electric railroads in the U.S.

There's an oft repeated trope amongst railfans that if the electric interurban passenger railroads in the United States had hung on for another 10-15 years or so, into the gas crises of the 1970s, some of them might still be around today (Only one interurban remains in OTL 2012, the South Shore Line between Chicago, IL and Gary, IN).

Is this wishful thinking, or was it at all possible? Had the infrastructure still been in place, could the oil scares convince people that the lines were worth keeping around, or were they doomed to the history books regardless?
 
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According to Wiki, most of the American interurban companies were financially shaky by the 1920's and the Great Depression killed off most of them by the 30's. There doesn't seem to be any realistic to keep them alive to the 70's.:confused:
 
According to Wiki, most of the American interurban companies were financially shaky by the 1920's and the Great Depression killed off most of them by the 30's. There doesn't seem to be any realistic to keep them alive to the 70's.:confused:

Quite a few where gone by the depression but the survivors where killled off in the 50's by car companies buying up the lines and then closing them. if this had not happened more COULD have survived to the modern day. Certainly it would be a challenge with the US car culture especially but it is theoretically possible
 
A fair number of lines survived WW2, because rationing prevented any shifting to autos. IF somehow you get the interurban lines hooking up with developers like Levitt (of Levittown fame) where branch lines are built to service these new developments which went up to provide housing for veterans and their new families (aided by GI bill house loans) then you have the commuting issue dealt with right away, no problem with needing to build/expand highways to accomodate the immediate bump in road traffic. As these developments/suburbs expand, you are set up to have streetcars as part of the planned net.

Just a thought about a possibility. The interstates get built for military reasons on schedule, but since the big push to auto was due to suburbanization/commuting and burbs designed around autos, in this scenario that is avoided. Also, the most expensive and contentious bits of the interstate were those in the urban/dense suburban areas so here you get bypasses built, and the roads in to cities designed for "distance" traffic coming in not commuters.
 
A couple of problems for interurban railroads were that they were built more around passenger traffic than freight and that their traffic (of either) was generally shorter haul-and both of these were most vulnerable to road competition. The ones that survived the longest (such as the South Shore and the Pacific Electric) generally had larger systems or developed freight traffic to sustain them. Even the smaller survivors (East Troy or the Iowa interurbans) did so as freight haulers. Serving an expanding suburban population helped (the other Chicago Insull lines-the North Shore and the CA&E, for example, or Philadelphia's Norristown line) but the lines had to be in place beforehand for the traffic to grow up around it. After 1929 (to some extent after WWI), the capital just wasn't available to build anything substantial to speculate on new traffic.

Keeping US interurbans around until the 1970's is well-nigh impossile but your best bets are going to be mergers to larger systems (as large as you can get) to capture long haul freight revenue and/or a regulatory policy that stifles non rail developement of freight haulage. People won't notice the additional inefficiencies in freight gathering and distribution but I can't see any way of eliminating the ascendency of the private automobile for passenger tranportation anytime after the Model T.
 

jotto

Donor
There's an oft repeated trope amongst railfans that if the electric interurban passenger railroads in the United States had hung on for another 10-15 years or so, into the gas crises of the 1970s, some of them might still be around today (Only one interurban remains in OTL 2012, the South Shore Line between Chicago, IL and Gary, IN).

Is this wishful thinking, or was it at all possible? Had the infrastructure still been in place, could the oil scares convince people that the lines were worth keeping around, or were they doomed to the history books regardless?

Actually the South Shore runs as far East as South Bend, IN airport. Just a small tidbit of information.
 
One POD could be further electrification by the railroad companies in the 50's. the northeast corridor catenary could theoretically take sustained 125mph running in the 30's. The GG1 could operate at 100mph so the only thing missing to improve speeds would be the will to do so and replacing jointed track with welded. With those changes it is feasible to have regular trains running at 125 in the US. You couldn't go faster than that until reliable in-cab signalling is developed as past 125 it is dicey wether a driver/engineer can reliable see the signals
 
One POD could be further electrification by the railroad companies in the 50's. the northeast corridor catenary could theoretically take sustained 125mph running in the 30's. The GG1 could operate at 100mph so the only thing missing to improve speeds would be the will to do so and replacing jointed track with welded. With those changes it is feasible to have regular trains running at 125 in the US. You couldn't go faster than that until reliable in-cab signalling is developed as past 125 it is dicey wether a driver/engineer can reliable see the signals
Well, welded rail is expensive, and was first tested in the us in 1930, i think the wiki article said, so i dont see it being put into widespread use in the middle of the depression, nor probably during wwii, when there were other priorities. By 1950, though, it is probably possible for larger scale introduction of the technology.
 
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