Before my house fire I had a book about the Atlanta street railways and interurbans. In the foreword was a quote from Walter Chrysler that was in an interview published in a transit industry magazine, the Street Railway Journal I think.
In this interview explicitly Chrysler stated it was the wish, aim and hope of the auto industry to drive the (privately owned) public transit industry out of business. I’m sure the date this was published was 1930, just as the Depression was hitting public transport ridership and revenue hard.
At the same time GM was organising its National City Lines subsidiary to take over these distressed properties, the US supreme court was using the anti-trust legislation to separate traction operations from the power companies that owned them, forcing arguably viable traction companies into the hands of GM and NCL, and the collapse of Samuel Insull’s Midland Utilitities holding company that controlled the three big Chicago interurbans, the Indiana Railroad and a few other properties to take on MU’s debts forcing them all into bankruptcy.
It wasn’t an easy time for the industry, with other factors as well (life expired plant and rolling stock needing replacement for example) that made it easy for companies to buy relatively cheaper buses and run on roads rather than renew their rail assets. What’s remarkable is anything survived this period. WW2 gave the industry a temporary boost, due to fuel and tyre rationing, but postwar the destruction continued and was stupidly replicated elsewhere, like here.
Tony G
> On 20 Sep 2017, at 12:53 pm, Robbie Smithzoqaeski@... mailto:zoqaeski@gmail.com [TramsDownUnder] TramsDownUnder@... mailto:TramsDownUnder@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
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> The North Shore, the South Shore, and CA&E were great. Chicago lost a lot when it lost two of the three; if government ownership had come earlier, and if the automobile industry hadn't totally destroyed public transport in the States, they might still be running and fulfilling a need for transportation that Chicago now lacks. The "L" is showing its age, and doesn't quite cover enough area. Public transport in America is definitely a case of "what might have been". Returning to trams, I've read that Chicago had something like 800 km of tram routes in its heyday, along virtually every major thoroughfare (they're the green lines on the attached map).
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> <1946map.jpg>
> (Image from http://www.chicago-l.org/maps/route/maps/1946map.jpg http://www.chicago-l.org/maps/route/maps/1946map.jpg )
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> It's because of the vindictiveness in which the auto industry (and public servants) treated public transport from the 50's onwards that I firmly believe public transport doesn't just need a renaissance, it also needs an "anti-road lobby" to undo a lot of the damage that was done.
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> Robbie
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> On 16 September 2017 at 15:06, Tony Gallowayarg@... mailto:arg@aapt.net.au [TramsDownUnder] TramsDownUnder@... mailto:TramsDownUnder@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
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> The NSL is the Holy Grail of electric traction as far as I’m concerned - with the other Chicago interurbans close to that pinnacle as well. It wasn’t called “The Road Of Service” for nothing :
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> <15541897_10154935909768631_5452019836996201231_n.jpg>
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> What the interurbans represent to me is “eco-transit” (to coin a term) at its best - doing a lot with not many resources at all, and doing it as well as possible. If you’ve ever wondered why I’m such a rabid anti-capitalist/corporatist a big part of it (apart from my own experience of life) was getting into the history of the North American interurban industry, the reasons for its growth in the first place and the reasons for its collapse. This trajectory parallels the path and fate of another industry in which I have a strong interest, which is American motorcycles - both were done in by the proliferation of cheap cars. Before WW1 there were over 120 motorcycle manufacturers in the US, by the mid 30s this was down to two - Harley-Davidson and Indian - and after 1955 Indian became an importer of British bikes after the UK company Brockhouse took it over.. In the 50s Royal Enfield bikes were sold in the US as “Indians”, and after this ceased the name floated around for years, with many court battles over who had the rights to it. In the 70s even Taiwanese minibikes we sold with the Indian brand. More recently the name has been revived by snowmobile company Polaris, and they’re giving H-D a tickle-up again, but the new Indians have no real link to the old bikes except they’re big V-twins.
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> Anyway here’s some more NSL porn :
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> These “Silverliner” cars were painted with aluminium paint and given “shadow lines” so they looked like fluted stainless steel in the 50s. The only other railway company I know of to do this was the Santa Fe, painting some smooth sided steel sleeping cars so they matched their stainless steel Budd and Pullman Standard cars :
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> <19030484_1688084314554132_5443699615405392923_n.jpg>
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> Raising the pole “on the fly” on the Skokie Valley Route :
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> <16938965_1631509173542644_4175438484265495682_n 2.jpg><18622100_1253151358116862_5558182124088316693_n 3.jpg>
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> #150 was the first of the “Steel Standard” cars, built by Brill in 1915 :
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> <18620385_1253151441450187_2858094914319939143_n.jpg>
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> They had open platform observation cars too -built by Pullman in 1928, out of service and stored by 1933 because of the depression, rebuilt into coaches 1942 for WW2 traffic :
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> <15621707_1487918001226076_7403141198468024519_n.jpg>
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> Before the steel cars these classic wooden cars were operated - note no third rail beams on the trucks, as this photo was taken before the NSL began running over the L into Chicago in 1917 :
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> <14184430_10154304957555568_2506243592708170119_n.jpg>
> Freight was worked with GE steeplecabs :
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> <14114947_1758055281136929_500794527562489194_o.jpg>
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> NSL was the first railway to offer trailer on flat car freight service :
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> <13087035_831319627186_3223937098719085473_o.jpg>
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> Here’s the NSL’s two battery equipped steeplecabs for off wire operation, 455 and 456, and their two four truck articulated motors bought from the Oregon Electric after WW2.They are at the Highwood shops about six months after abandonment here, unfortunately all NSL freight motors were scrapped :
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> <12909485_10207579907770099_4086550493982057078_o.jpg>
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> Here’s 458 getting torched in 1964 :
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> <14115449_1164755943583076_698264725277337916_o.jpg>
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> Trains on the original Shore Line Route. This line closed July 24 1955 :
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> <13662299_1212056202152446_4241881480091396192_o.jpg>
> <13690944_1212799515411448_8486721387906367816_o.jpg>
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> To finish, here’s the last Train Order issued for the movement of empty passenger cars out of Milwaukee - note date and time :
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> <15977179_1313987915326544_2636776058034073587_n.jpg>
> These pics were all pinched from the CNS&M Facebook page :
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> https://www.facebook.com/groups/55585724280/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/55585724280/
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> I hope I’m not boring anyone with NSL stuff.
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> Tony G
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>> On 16 Sep 2017, at 12:14 pm,prescottt@... mailto:prescottt@ymail..com [TramsDownUnder] TramsDownUnder@... mailto:TramsDownUnder@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
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>> There's the small matter of journey time too - stretching out 4 days to 10 is fine if you have nothing else to do in life!
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>> IP and Ghan are indeed hotels or cruise ships on rails. There is now about 6 additional hours on the IP's trip compared to 1970 due to the side tours along the route that they've introduced. There's also only one train a week, not two. A return economy ticket in 1970 was $125 which, by the Reserve Bank's calculator, represents about $1,400 today. I think the pensioner rates have all but gone. Motorail is now only available from Adelaide westwards.
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>> I think my last trip to Adelaide was about 25 years ago. Sleeper on Western Mail from Sydney to Parkes, breakfast at Parkes RRR where another bloke was having a beer with his steak and eggs at 7 am! Then Silver City Comet where the conductor thought we were too cramped in economy and kindly put us in first class on a near-empty train, then sitting car on IP from Broken Hill to Port Augusta, Bluebird to Adelaide. Rode the Glenleg tram (H class) and Red Hens of course. Then back by Bluebird to PA and sleeper and the whole works on IP as a treat back to Sydney. That mixture represented the railway days now long gone!
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>> I think I'm starting to itch with interest in the NSL too as a result of your frequent little tasters!
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>> Tony P
>>
>> ---InTramsDownUnder@... mailto:TramsDownUnder@yahoogroups.com, <arg@...> wrote :
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>> So what do you expect when the train has been turned into an overpriced land bound cruise ship for the useless parasitic rich ?
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>> Aviation is like the mining industry - if it had to pay full compensation for the environmental damage it inflicts it wouldn’t exist beyond very limited parameters.
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>> Tony G - too much NSL is never enough !
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