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Trains Magazine 1962 July The General an honored veteran is recalled to active d
Trains Magazine 1962 July
July 1962Volume 22 Number 9
NEWS - - -3
NEWS PHOTOS-8
STEAM NEWS PHOTOS12
RIDING HIGH -16
THE GENERAL -18
WHITE FLAGS - -32
STEEPEST RAILROAD34
RUSSIAN RAILROADING40
MAIL PICKUP - -48
COVER: W&A No. 3, the General, along River Road in Louisville, Ky. C. Norman Beasley, L&N.
Railway post office 50Of books and trains 53
Second section52Running extra56
Interchange 57
ELECTROLINER EPITAPH
AFTER Hamlet-like deliberation over an abandonment application originally filed in May 1958, the I.C.C. decided May 18, 1962, that the 107-mile, in-terurbanish Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee was not to be. Thus the curtain was all but rung down on the second of Sam Insull's high-speed electrics (Chicago Aurora & Elgin quit June 10, 1958), leaving only the barely-in-the-black Chicago South Shore & South Bend.
Like many of its breed, North Shore began life as a streetcar line in 1895. By 1908 the Chicago & Milwaukee Electric was running through service between Evanston, Ill., and Milwaukee - and it was bankrupt. Reorganized by Insull in 1916 and given its present name, the North Shore reached the Loop over El tracks in 1919. During the '20's CNS&M completed its Skokie Valley line, raced to the electric speed championship of the land ("Did you ever travel 80 miles per hour?" blurbed its billboards), dabbled in piggyback, pioneered dining-car service, and made much money. In 1932 the North Shore, like many a steam road, couldn't pay all its bills (including one to American Brake Shoe & Foundry, which brought suit) and became a bankrupt once more. Morale perked up in 1941 with delivery of two Electroliners ("Finest interurban equipment ever constructed in the United States," says Interurban Era author William D. Middleton) and so did business. The line that had carried 6.6 million passengers in 1938 was handling more than 22 million by 1944, thanks in no small measure to on-line Great Lakes Naval Training Station.
After the war inflation and the automobile went to work on the reorganized (1946) North Shore's balance sheet. CNS&M, dependent upon passengers for 75 per cent or more of its revenues, got squeezed between static fares and rising wages. Even abandonment of its commuter-carrying Shore Line in 1955 could not put the road back into the black. So in 1958, CNS&M, now controlled by the Susquehanna Corporation, petitioned to quit and in the fall of 1959 an I.C.C. examiner agreed. Illinois regulatory authorities denied permission and a well organized commuters' lobby went to bat for continued service, even at the price of higher fares. In May 1960 the I.C.C. reversed its examiner and ordered one more year of operation, with the suggestion that fares indeed be raised. But the economics went astray. A 23 per cent fare boost granted in June 1960 produced less than a fourth of the $500,000 expected; and a simultaneous wage boost tacked almost $227,000 a year onto expenses. A new six-lane expressway into the Loop siphoned off passengers by the thousands; parallel Chicago & North Western
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