Interurban streetcar
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Interurban and radial railway were names used to describe streetcar lines connecting urban areas, primarily during the early 20th century. In the USA, streetcars often competed with conventional passenger rail transportation, being less expensive but slower. For technological and other reasons most interurban systems have now been replaced by bus transport, though some have been maintained as modern streetcar or light-rail networks or replaced by higher-capacity railways. In some instances streetcars have been reintroduced as a form of retro-transportation to encourage tourism (see heritage streetcar).
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United States of America
In the late 1890s, electric traction systems called streetcars, which had been developed by Frank Sprague, expanded rapidly. By the end of 1904 several thousand miles of track had been laid. From 1906 until 1908 another 15,000 miles of interurban track was laid down.
Most of the interurban track that had been laid was located in Ohio and Indiana. Both states had 3,000 miles of track. In Michigan and Illinois there was another 2,000 miles of track which were interconnected. In Texas and in California thousands of miles of additional track was also laid down by different companies.
In the early 1900s interurban transportation was very popular in both rural areas and cities. Although slower in speed than than steam driven passenger trains, the interurban system made up for speed by increased service. After 1910 the popularity of the Ford Model T automobile began to diminish the interurban passenger load and during the 1920s many interurban systems were declared bankrupt. As a result of this shift in transportation methods the small and non-profitable lines were discontinued.
By the 1930s the interurban passenger street cars began to disappear, although some of their rail lines were converted from electric traction to the carriage of freight drawn by steam engines. By the 1960s, the few interurban street car systems that remained in service included the Chicago, South Shore and South Bend Railroad, the Northern Indiana Railway, and the Norristown High Speed Line and other Philadelphia suburban lines.
See also
- Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Electric Railway - Speed in excess of 65 miles per hour on a regular schedule.
- Ohio Electric Railway
- Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad
- Chicago, South Shore and South Bend Railroad
- Union Traction Company of Indiana
- Indiana Railroad
- Northern Indiana Railway
- Pacific Electric Railway (California)
- Northern Texas Traction Company - linked Dallas and Fort Worth in 1902
- Public Service Railroad (New Jersey)
- New York, Westchester and Boston Railway (part is now the IRT Dyre Avenue Line of the New York City Subway)
- Philadelphia and Western Railroad (now SEPTA's Norristown High Speed Line)
- MBTA Green Line "D" Branch - a steam railroad converted for streetcar operation
Canada
In Southern Ontario, intercity streetcar lines were called radial railways, because their routes generally radiated from a central city. The longest routes from Toronto included one running to Lake Simcoe and another to Guelph. A portion of one of these lines is preserved and plays host to a working museum of streetcars and other transit vehicles at the Halton County Radial Railway in Rockwood. A notable feature of Toronto's radial railways was that because the city streetcar tracks of the Toronto Railway Company (later taken over by the Toronto Transportation Commission) were built to a wider gauge (which is still used to this day), radial cars from the outlying areas could not pass the city limits, requiring passengers to change trains.
Some of the closer sections of Toronto's radial railways were assimilated into the city's streetcar network, and with the city's expansion, some communities once linked by radial railway now have relatively central stations on the Toronto subway. On a regional level, GO Transit's commuter railway network is designed on a similar radial principle, though it uses much heavier-capacity mainline trains.
There were also significant radial systems operating from Hamilton, St. Catharines, Windsor, and throughout the Grand River Valley, the last of which may see a revival should Grand River Transit obtain funding to build a light railway between Waterloo, Kitchener, and eventually Cambridge, running partially on the tracks of the former Grand River Railway.
See also
External links
- Interurbans: The technology of economical local transport in the United States (http://www.du.edu/~jcalvert/railway/trolley.htm)
- Dave's Electric Railroads (http://206.103.49.193/index.html), a collection of electric railroad, interurban, and streetcar photography from many eras
- Principle (sic) Interurban Car builders of the U.S (http://members.tripod.com/~kinser_11/utc.html)
- Roster of Preserved North American Electric Railway Cars (http://www.bera.org/pnaerc.html)