 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(July 2015) |
The Lake Shore Electric Railway (LSE) was an interurban electric railway that ran primarily between Cleveland and Toledo, Ohio by way of Sandusky and Fremont. Through arrangements with connecting interurban lines, it also offered service from Fremont to Fostoria and Lima, Ohio, and at Toledo to Detroit and Cincinnati.
The LSE was formed in 1901 and was composed of four predecessor streetcar and interurban lines, all owned by the Everett-Moore Syndicate. The Lake Shore Electric operated a 60-mile route between Cleveland and Toledo. In 1907, the company constructed a cutoff between Sandusky and Fremont, Ohio, which reduced the distance between Cleveland and Toledo by five miles and decreased travel time by 30 minutes. The old and the new routes were operated with hourly passenger service where a two-car interurban from Cleveland separated at Sandusky and recoupled at Fremont to continue to Toledo. This service continued until 1939. [1]
Business for the LSE was good until the mid-1920s, as many roads were unpaved, muddy, or dusty, and cartage and passenger transportation was horse drawn and slow. Around 1925, the states began paving highways, the counties began paving rural roads, the cities began paving streets, and inexpensive cars began to be produced in growing numbers. Business for interurbans began to drop as a result, and by 1930 many interurbans had stopped operating. The LSE barely remained in business, but to make matters worse, the economic collapse of the Great Depression was underway. [2]
Starting around 1930, the LSE established a productive and growing freight business with neighboring interurban Cincinnati and Lake Erie RR. Together, the two traction lines with their connection at Toledo provided overnight delivery from the approximately 300 miles between Cincinnati and Cleveland. Steam railroads were unable to provide such fast service by a matter of days. At Toledo in 1936, 17,000 pounds of freight passed between the two lines. [3] Although barely profitable, the resulting freight business generated income allowing the two lines to survive and keeping its employees working. However, the deepening Great Depression further reduced this freight business, and the LSE declared bankruptcy in 1933. Operations continued under the direction of a court-appointed bankruptcy receiver. In 1937, LSE freight-service employees went on strike, and the LSE receiver terminated freight operations that day. [4] The next year, the railroad abandoned its remaining operations, which were passenger only. This also affected the Toledo connecting C&LE with the loss of freight business to Cleveland, and the C&LE was abandoned in 1939. [5]
The Lake Shore Electric at its height operated multiple-unit trains of interurban cars to and from Cleveland and Toledo on an hourly schedule. Eastbound trains split at Fremont on the west, while westbound trains split at Ceylon Junction (a passenger station on the former S&I line east of Huron at the connection with the former TF&N branch to Norwalk) on the east. After splitting, some cars would travel via the Huron, Sandusky and Castalia northern route, while others would go via the Norwalk, Monroeville, Bellevue, and Clyde southern route. The cars of eastbound trains rejoined each other at Ceylon Junction, while the cars of westbound trains rejoined at Fremont.
The Lake Shore Electric achieved nationwide note after motorman William Lang climbed out of his moving trolley car and snatched a 22-month-old child off the tracks on August 24, 1932, near Lorain, Ohio. The young girl, Leila Jean Smith, grew to adulthood and they remained friends for the rest of Lang's life.
The LSE went into bankruptcy on October 5, 1932. It continued operation under court-ordered receivership until abandonment. As its passenger business waned with the increasing number of private automobiles on paved roads and the effects of the Depression, it outlasted most connecting interurban lines by concentrating on freight business. LSE had developed a marginally profitable freight service interchanging with the Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad at Toledo to deliver less-than-carload (LCL) freight from southern Ohio factories to Cleveland. The C&LE traction freights continued through Toledo to Cleveland on LSE trackage, operating on a tight overnight schedule; they could thus provide next day delivery, whereas competing steam railroads would take at least two days longer. LSE also introduced an early intermodal service called the "Railwagon" that enabled truck trailers to load on a specially designed flatcar without the need for a loading ramp or crane. Bureaucratic delays by Ohio motor carrier regulators doomed the service.
A poorly planned strike by LSE freight agents and office staff in 1938 caused the LSE receiver to immediately abandon the business. A brief article in a Cleveland newspaper noted that 150 interurban employees lost their jobs immediately. The loss of the Cleveland connection seriously hurt the C&LE leading it to bankruptcy in 1939 and the nearby Indiana Railroad interurban the next year. The LSE ended all interurban rail operations on May 15, 1938. [6]
Several physical remnants of the Lake Shore Electric can still be found today. In the cities of Bay Village and Avon Lake are streets named "Electric," running over the former right-of-way. [7] [8] Also, bridge piers can be found at the Cleveland Metroparks Huntington Reservation and in Cahoon Memorial Park, both in Bay Village, and at several other locations. [9] Some former LSE structures remain standing, and have been converted to other uses. Much of its route can still be traced in northern Ohio by power lines on unusually high utility poles, where LSE's former electrical transmission infrastructure became the property of area utility companies.
As of 2009, LSE coach #167 (that made the last run in 1938) sits at the secure parking lot of Journey Home Restoration Company, in Lorain, Ohio. It is in surprisingly good shape. #167 is a 1915 Jewett Car Co. steel coach with Baldwin MCB trucks. In 1996 LSE167 appeared at the Centennial celebration for the Steel Plant in Lorain as the icon for the original Johnson Steel Company, producers of Jaybird streetcar rail. The Northern Ohio Railway Museum (NORM) in Chippewa Lake, Ohio has several pieces of LSE rolling stock preserved, including Lake Shore Electric wood Coach #149 (1927 Niles); wood Coach #151 (1906 Niles) and steel Coach #181 (1918 Jewett). Freight equipment includes wood Freight Motor #42 (1908 Niles) and wood Freight Trailer #464 (home-built by LSE in 1919). NORM also has an original Lorain Street Railway wood City Car #83, a line that was later operated by the Lake Shore Electric. [10] In addition, wooden coach #150 (1906 Niles) and wood interurban box car #810 (1924 Kuhlman) are on trucks and undergoing restoration at Illinois Railway Museum as of February 15, 2010. [11] LSE steel coach #174 (1918 Jewett) is preserved as a static exhibit at The Works in Newark, Ohio. [12] Car #38 is parked in the Avon Lake Shopping Center, located on Lake Road, very near Electric Blvd.
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 Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad (C&LE) was a short-lived electric interurban railway that operated in 1930–1939 Depression-era Ohio and ran between the major cities of Cincinnati, Dayton, Springfield, Columbus, and Toledo. It had a substantial freight business and interchanged with other interurbans to serve Detroit and Cleveland. Its twenty high-speed "Red Devil" interurban passenger cars operated daily between Cincinnati and Cleveland via Toledo, the longest same equipment run by an interurban in the United States. The C&LE failed because of the weak economy and the loss of essential freight interchange partners. It ceased operating in 1939.
The Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, established in 1833, and sometimes referred to as the Lake Shore, was a major part of the New York Central Railroad's Water Level Route from Buffalo, New York, to Chicago, Illinois, primarily along the south shore of Lake Erie and across northern Indiana. The line's trackage remains a major rail transportation corridor used by Amtrak passenger trains and several freight lines; in 1998, its ownership was split at Cleveland, Ohio, between CSX Transportation to the east and Norfolk Southern Railway in the west.
The Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railway (CH&DR) was an electric interurban railway that existed between 1926 and 1930 in the U.S. state of Ohio. It was absorbed in 1930 into the new Cincinnati and Lake Erie interurban railway. In typical interurban fashion, it had its own right of way in open country, although this was often adjacent or parallel to a road. In cities and towns it operated on city streets. This included two and three car freight/express trains as well as passenger cars.
The Toledo, Port Clinton and Lakeside Railway was an interurban electrified railway system serving northwestern Ohio's Marblehead Peninsula.
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.
Incorporated on April 17, 1886, at Marblehead, Ohio, the Lakeside and Marblehead Railroad (L&M) was a short standard gauge railroad that spanned about seven miles (11.3 km) in length. It extended from Marblehead through Lakeside to a connection with the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway at Danbury. A common carrier, it carried both freight and passengers. It was abandoned as a common carrier railroad July 31, 1964, operated for the last time as a private industrial railroad in Summer 1978, and its tracks were removed in Fall 1997.
The Terre Haute, Indianapolis and Eastern Traction Company, or THI&E, was the second largest interurban electric railway in the U.S. state of Indiana during the height of the 1920s "interurban era." This system included over 400 miles (640 km) of track, with lines radiating from Indianapolis to the east, northwest, west and southwest as well as streetcar lines in several major cities. The THI&E was formed in 1907 by the Schoepf-McGowan Syndicate as a combination of several predecessor interurban and street car companies and was operated independently until incorporation into the Indiana Railroad in 1931. The THI&E served a wide range of territory, including farmlands in central Indiana, the mining region around Brazil, and numerous urban centers. Eventually, it slowly succumbed like all the other central Indiana interurban lines, to competition from automobiles, trucks, and improved paralleling highways.
The Detroit United Railway was a transport company which operated numerous streetcar and interurban lines in southeast Michigan. Although many of the lines were originally built by different companies, they were consolidated under the control of the Everett-Moore syndicate, a Cleveland-based group of investors. The company incorporated on December 31, 1900, and continued to expand into the early 1920s through new construction and the acquisition of smaller concerns. After the DUR acquired the Detroit-Jackson line in 1907, it operated more than 400 miles (640 km) of interurban lines and 187 miles (301 km) of street city street railway lines.
The Columbus, Delaware and Marion Electric Company or CD&M was an interurban electric railroad that operated passenger and freight service in northern Ohio from 1903 to 1933.
The Interurban Bridge, also known as the Ohio Electric Railroad Bridge. is a historic interurban railway reinforced concrete multiple arch bridge built in 1908 to span the Maumee River joining Lucas and Wood counties near Waterville, Ohio. The span was once the world's largest earth-filled reinforced concrete bridge. One of the bridge's supports rests on the Roche de Boeuf, a historic Indian council rock, which was partially destroyed by the bridge's construction. The bridge, which is no longer in use, is a popular subject for photographers and painters, who view it from Farnsworth Metropark.
The Lehigh Valley Transit Company (LVT) was a regional transport company that was headquartered in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The company began operations in 1901, as an urban trolley and interurban rail transport company. It operated successfully into the 1930s, but struggled financially during the Great Depression, and was saved from abandonment by a dramatic ridership increase during and following World War II.
The 1924 Lorain–Sandusky tornado was a deadly F4 tornado which struck the towns of Sandusky and Lorain, Ohio on Saturday, June 28, 1924. It remains the deadliest single tornado ever recorded in Ohio history, killing more people than the infamous 1974 Xenia and 1985 Niles-Wheatland tornadoes combined.
Samuel Floyd Angus was an American business owner and professional sports team owner. He was the principal owner of the Detroit Tigers of the American League from November 1901 through October 1903.
The Red Devil was a high-speed interurban streetcar built by the Cincinnati Car Company for the Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad (C&LE) in 1929–1930. They saw service throughout Ohio in the 1930s. After the failure of the C&LE in 1939 they saw service with the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City Railway (CRANDIC) and the Lehigh Valley Transit Company. Several have been preserved.
The North Coast Inland Trail is a work-in-process multipurpose trail project that currently consists of several separate portions, defined by their counties, in northern Ohio, United States. Affiliates with the trails have high hopes to connect all of these portions and to extend the trails into Indiana and Pennsylvania, two of Ohio's land-bordering states.
The Chicago Aurora and Elgin Railroad was an electric passenger railroad from Chicago west through its suburbs. The western portions were high-speed heavy lines, but access to the downtown area was on an elevated railway, part of Chicago’s “L” system. Because of the electric power and tight loading gauge, the cars were of unusual designs. One other area railroad, the “North Shore Line”, also used the “L” to enter Chicago and had similar cars.
The Chicago Lake Shore and South Bend Railway formed in 1901, is the earliest predecessor of the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)