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Fort Wayne and Wabash Valley Trolleys by George Bradley CERA Bulletin #122 w/DJ
Fort Wayne and Wabash Valley Trolleys by George Bradley CERA Bulletin #122
Hard cover with dust jacket Small tear in lower edge of dust jacket + -see photos
Copyright 1983
288 pages
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ChapterPage
1. Citizens' Horsecars9
2. The Magic of Electricity17
3. Splendid Robison Park 189623
4. New Century-New Challenge29
5. The Wabash Valley Route35
6. Four More Interurban Companies Arrive45
7. Service, Facilities, Electric Power... and a New Plan55
8. Kingsland-End of a Dream!63
9. The Troubled Teens69
10. The Indiana Service Corporation81
11. The Spy Run Plant95
12. Fort Wayne 1920-1931105
13. Indiana Railroad...the "magic" interurban113
14. Fort Wayne 1932-1947129
15. Fort Wayne 1947-1982143
16. Logansport, Wabash and Peru City Lines151
17. Lafayette City Lines161
18. Purdue University & Electric Railway Engineering187
19. Rolling Stock193
Car Plans270
Bibliography276
Maps277
The Wabash River has been made famous in song and verse. However, until now no one has told of the great impact that the electric railways had on the cities in the upper Wabash Valley. Electric interurbans linked five cities from Fort Wayne southwest through Huntington, Wabash and Logansport to Lafayette. The growth of these communities followed as our story unfolds.
No one can put a yardstick to a local transit system and say just how much it will affect the region's growth. In the 1860's, Fort Wayne and Lafayette were roughly equal in size and importance. Local pride resulted in Lafayette constructing its first street railway in 1869. It soon failed. Fort Wayne's line began in 1871. It succeeded. In that period Fort Wayne grew much faster than Lafayette and today it remains the larger city.
Horsecars were replaced by electric cars during the next twenty years. Streetcars then ruled in Fort Wayne for the following half century, a period of tremendous growth and prosperity for that city and its environs in Allen County.
It was inevitable, before hard-surfaced roads, that the electric railways would reach out and link urban areas. Eventually they provided faster, more frequent and cleaner transportation than the mainline railroads whose trains were hauled by steam locomotives. In Indiana (and Ohio) there was a virtual network of these interurbans. In many towns, lines radiated in at least four directions from the town square. This is the story of one of those systems, the Fort Wayne and Wabash Valley Traction Company.
The Fort Wayne and Wabash Valley Traction Company's electric rail empire grew out of the consolidation of several smaller lines. Large amounts of eastern capital flowed into the midwest during the first decade of the century. The Schoepf-McGowan Syndicate became the all-time giant controlling approximately 1,400 route miles of interurban railroad lines in Indiana and Ohio plus several major city systems. The Fort Wayne & Wabash Valley Traction Company, one of the syndicate's major properties, controlled the upper Wabash Valley from Lafayette to Fort Wayne. Syndicate affiliates joined forces to create two Fort Wayne/ Indianapolis through, passenger and freight routes, plus a major connection to Lima, Ohio and the principal Ohio interurbans. A tragic collision at Kingsland brought a halt to the consolidations and ownership at Fort Wayne was changed.
The twenties produced a new phenomenon -the electric utility holding company. A revitalized Fort Wayne property which was also a major power producer controlled the bulk of the electric power in the upper Wabash Valley. The new Indiana Service Corporation became a part of Samuel Insull's utility company empire and a major company in the Indiana group under the banner of Midland United Company. Midland United took what appeared to be the most promising interurban lines of the power companies and formed the Indiana Railroad System in 1930. Indiana Railroad was the last hurrah for the Indiana interurbans.
It was battered by the Depression, modern highways and cheap autos. By 1941 it was gone. Indiana Railroad by its very premise of a modern and unified system has made it one of the best and most fondly remembered of all the rail systems.
The more efficient trolley coach ended the supremacy of the streetcars. In turn the more flexible motor bus replaced the trolley coach in an attempt to locate riders who moved to a sprawling suburbia with low population density. Following World War II Fort Wayne Transit, Inc. brought the system back into local ownership. This continued until 1968 when the city-owned Public Transportation Corporation purchased and modernized the Fort Wayne Transit, Inc. system. PTC has a comprehensive system with an excellent bus fleet, serving Fort Wayne today, 110 years after the first horsecars operated.
Pictures cover almost every period of the Fort Wayne and Wabash Valley area trolleys, interurbans and bus systems, as well as the story of electric railway engineering at Purdue University. There are detailed car and bus rosters, car drawings and maps. The story should be of interest to historians, railfans and anyone who has a passing interest in the areas described. It serves also as a study of the interrelationships of the electric street railways and the power companies they created. Also covered, to some extent, is the growth of electric power and the financial situation that made it practical to try to continue the electric lines into the 1930's to gain some return on the investment.
The author, George K. Bradley, a member of Central Electric Railfans' Association, has studied and written about the Indiana rail systems for over 25 years. He knows Fort Wayne, Lafayette and Purdue University very well, worked for Fort Wayne Transit, Inc. and served as Vice Chairman of Fort Wayne Public Transportation Corporation's Board of Directors.
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