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Fulton County is a county in the U.S. state of Illinois. According to the 2020 census, it had a population of 33,609. Its county seat is Lewistown, and the largest city is Canton. Fulton County comprises the Canton, IL Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is part of the Peoria-Canton, IL Combined Statistical Area.
The interurban is a type of electric railway, with tram-like electric self-propelled rail cars which run within and between cities or towns. The term "interurban" is usually used in North America, with other terms used outside it. They were very prevalent in many parts of the world before the Second World War and were used primarily for passenger travel between cities and their surrounding suburban and rural communities. Interurban as a term encompassed the companies, their infrastructure, their cars that ran on the rails, and their service. In the United States, the early 1900s interurban was a valuable economic institution, when most roads between towns, many town streets were unpaved, and transportation and haulage was by horse-drawn carriages and carts.
The Chicago Aurora and Elgin Railroad (CA&E), known colloquially as the "Roarin' Elgin" or the "Great Third Rail", was an interurban railroad that operated passenger and freight service on its line between Chicago and Aurora, Batavia, Geneva, St. Charles, and Elgin, Illinois. The railroad also operated a small branch to Mt. Carmel Cemetery in Hillside and owned a branch line to Westchester.
The Illinois Terminal Railroad Company, known as the Illinois Traction System until 1937, was a heavy duty interurban electric railroad with extensive passenger and freight business in central and southern Illinois from 1896 to 1956. When Depression era Illinois Traction was in financial distress and had to reorganize, the Illinois Terminal name was adopted to reflect the line's primary money making role as a freight interchange link to major steam railroads at its terminal ends, Peoria, Danville, and St. Louis. Interurban passenger service slowly was reduced, ending in 1956. Freight operation continued but was hobbled by tight street running in some towns requiring very sharp radius turns. In 1956, ITC was absorbed by a consortium of connecting railroads.
The Glendale and Montrose Railway Company (G&M) was an interurban electrified railway in Southern California, in the United States. It was unique among the Los Angeles local railways, as it was among the area's only interurban line never absorbed into the expansive Pacific Electric system.
Area codes 309 and 861 are telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the west-central part of the U.S. state of Illinois. The numbering plan area includes cities such as Bloomington, Canton, East Moline, East Peoria, Galesburg, Geneseo, Kewanee, Macomb, Minonk, Moline, Morton, Normal, Pekin, Peoria, Rock Island, Silvis, and many smaller communities in west-central Illinois. Area code 309 was created in 1957 in an split of area code 815. 861 was added to the numbering plan area on February 24, 2023, in formation of an overlay.
The Fox River Trolley Museum is a railroad museum in South Elgin, Illinois. Incorporated in 1961 as R.E.L.I.C., it opened in 1966 and became the Fox River Trolley Museum in 1984.
The Elgin and Belvidere Electric Company was a 36-mile (58 km) interurban line that connected Belvidere, Illinois and Elgin, Illinois. It was the central link in the interurban network connecting Freeport, Rockford, Elgin, and Chicago which included the Rockford and Interurban Railway to the west and the Chicago, Aurora and Elgin Railroad to the east. The line was operational from 1907 until 1930. In 1927, the line was extended to Rockford over a line of the Rockford and Interurban.
The Woodstock and Sycamore Traction Company was a short-lived interurban railroad that operated from 1911 to 1918 between the cities of Sycamore and Marengo, Illinois; it never reached its intended destination of Woodstock. Its headquarters and repair shop were in the city of Genoa, midway on the route. The 26.5-mile (42.6 km) track was never electrified, due to lack of funds, so gasoline-powered cars were used. Three 55-foot (16.8 m) McKeen cars were purchased, but the large cars proved unsatisfactory; they were replaced by two smaller Fairbanks-Morse cars.
The Indiana Railroad (IR) was the last of the typical Midwestern United States interurban lines. It was formed in 1930–31 by combining the operations of the five major interurban systems in central Indiana into one entity. The predecessor companies came under the control of Midland Utilities, owned by Samuel Insull. His plan was to modernize the profitable routes and abandon the unprofitable ones. With the onset of the Great Depression, the Insull empire collapsed and the Indiana Railroad was left with a decaying infrastructure and little hope of overcoming the growing competition of the automobile for passenger business and the truck for freight business. The IR faced bankruptcy in 1933, and Bowman Elder was designated as the receiver to run the company. Payments on bonded debt were suspended. Elder was able to keep the system virtually intact for four years, and IR operated about 600 miles (970 km) of interurban lines throughout Indiana during this period. During the late 1930s, the routes were abandoned one by one until a 1941 wreck with fatalities south of Indianapolis put an abrupt end to the Indiana Railroad's last passenger operations.
The Chicago, Ottawa and Peoria Railway, or CO&P, was an electric interurban railway running along the Illinois River Valley between Joliet and Princeton. It was one of the longest lines in the state and was unique as an isolated section of the Illinois Traction System. Intended to be a part of the planned Chicago-Peoria-St. Louis system, the section between the CO&P at Streator and the ITS at Mackinaw Junction was never built, leaving the former line separate from the rest of the ITS. The CO&P provided regular service to the cities along the Illinois Valley until its failure at the height of the Great Depression.
The Rock Island Southern Railway, or RIS, was one of the most unusual interurban systems in the United States. It consisted of two distinct divisions, each with its own unique operating parameters. It provided passenger service to the western Illinois cities of Rock Island, Monmouth and Galesburg for two decades, with freight service surviving into the 1950s on the barest remnants of a once-impressive system.
The Youngstown and Ohio River Railroad, or Y&OR, was one of the smaller interurban railways in the state of Ohio. Along with the Youngstown and Southern Railway, the Y&OR formed a traction link between Youngstown, Ohio and the Ohio River at East Liverpool. It served several coal mines in the area and it was distinguished by the unusual feat of electrifying a section of a steam railroad, the Pittsburgh, Lisbon and Western Railroad, as part of a trackage rights agreement. The Y&OR operated for 24 years.
The Lee County Central Electric Railway, or LCC, was an electric interurban railway linking the small prairie town of Lee Center with nearby Amboy and Middlebury in northern Illinois. The line was conceived as an electric railway link between the cities of Steward, south of Rochelle, and Dixon, but was never able to raise enough capital to reach either destination. The LCC was one of the smallest and shortest-lived electric operations in the entire national interurban network, and yet despite its notorious operational problems it survived as a de-electrified freight carrier far longer than most larger interurban railways.
References
- ↑ Illinois Railroad and Warehouse Commission (1914). Annual Report. p. 263.
- ↑ Hilton, George W.; Due, John Fitzgerald (1960). The Electric Interurban Railways in America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. p. 346. ISBN 978-0-8047-4014-2. OCLC 237973.