Historic Society: Railroad History

The following is a very brief but somewhat detailed history of the interurban. To cover all aspects would be a book, so this is a condensed version will give folks a sense of the interurban and its history. This does not focus on Coatesville, but the interurban did come through Coatesville. Before delving into the history of the interurban, I can state that the interurban in Coatesville served as a crucial transportation link, facilitating access to markets and improving mobility for farmers and residents. It provided a fast and frequent way to transport farm products like milk, fruit, and produce to urban areas, improving access to markets. Furthermore, the interurban offered a new level of mobility for farm families and workers, allowing them to travel to nearby towns and cities with greater ease. Well before State Road 75 or even Hadley Street existed, the interurban existed. It would come into Coatesville along what is not Hadley Street. The interurban depot was located what is now the intersection of Milton and Hadley. The line ran east to west along Hadley on the southernmost side of Hadley Street. Remnants of the old rail system were paved over, but some of it still exists below the surface of Hadley Street today. Now on to the history of the Interurban. ______________________________________________ The term “interurban” was first created by Anderson Lawyer Charles L. Henry, a former Indiana State Senator and member of the U. S. House of Representatives. The interurban was electric traction which is defined as any means of transport in which vehicles are powered by electric motors supplied with electricity from relatively distant power generation stations. The first interurban in America, after a solid start in Europe, connected Newark to Granville, in central Ohio, east northeast of Columbus in 1889. By 1916, the interurban network, although it really couldn’t be called that directly, in the United State hit its peak at around 16,000 miles, with 2,000 of those in Indiana. (Put that into perspective – between Indiana and Ohio, that was 4,800 miles of interurban track. Meaning one-third of all the interurban tracks in the entire country were in these two states.) Indianapolis, and to a certain extent Terre Haute, were the center of the Interurban in Indiana. “From Indianapolis, interurban lines radiated to every major community except Bloomington. There was no interurban service to Vincennes or Madison, or from the Calumet Region south to the Wabash River.” Out of Terre Haute, interurbans connected to Brazil (and from there, Indianapolis), Clinton, Sullivan and Paris, Illinois. The fare was 25 cents (to Brazil or Clinton) and 35 cents (to Sullivan and Paris). There were many rural stops, as there were on all such routes. Most of those were numbered, and those numbers were used far past the end of the interurban era. Trains typically ran at 25 miles per hour, with some running around 50 miles per hour or so. The “Highlander,” a service of the Terre Haute, Indianapolis & Eastern between the title cities, accomplished that trip in 2 hour and 5 minutes. This would be the fastest connection, at the time, between Terre Haute and Indianapolis. Most of the cars along the THI&E could run 55 miles per hour, handle 50 passengers, and have baggage areas of around 50 square feet. Terre Haute traffic, in 1920, included 73 trains coming into the city on a daily basis, with 8,000 passengers being served. Adding the 15 million yearly street car passengers, using Terre Haute’s 50 street cars on 30 miles of track, and Terre Haute was quite the passenger center. Interurbans were not immune to the treatment received by the steam trains. Such is the case for the THI&E train running from Indianapolis to Martinsville on 30 January 1923. Two armed bandits stopped the train near Maywood, robbing the passengers of around $1,000 in cash and valuables. The title of the first interurban line in the state is debatable. It depends on the size of the towns connected. The Brazil Rapid Transit Company, opened on 16 July 1892, connected Harmony to Cottage Hill through Brazil. This 4.5 miles of track could be considered the first. However, Union Traction Company, on 1 January 1898, opened between the cities of Anderson and Alexandria. Some people consider this the first true interurban, since it connected two cities. The worst day in the history of interurbans in Indiana was 21 September 1910. Seven miles north of Bluffton, near the unincorporated village of Kingsland, at shortly after noon, a wreck on the Fort Wayne & Bluffton would take the lives of over 40 men and women, mostly from Bluffton. “Indiana never had such a disaster on any of its lines of transportation before. It is the greatest disaster in the history of electric railways in the world.” Where the wreck happened was a curve that was “hidden by small woods that run down to the track, so that one motorman can not see another approach.” The wreck was that of a small car heading north along the line and a heavy special car heading south. The northbound car was, at one point, known as #233 on the Industry line of the Muncie Street Railway. By all accounts, it was no match when it came to colliding with the big, heavy, interurban car coming the other way. The only instructions that the southbound car had was to clear the line for regular cars. This didn’t happen. Fred Corkwell, motorman of the southbound car, either didn’t see or outright disregarded orders with regards to the northbound car. The Muncie Press reported, the day after the wreck, that 40 people were killed, with eight people injured. Of those eight, four, including Motorman Corkwell, were listed as “probably will die.” In the end, 42 people died as a result of the wreck. One head on collision in Illinois stopped a plan to connect Terre Haute to Charleston and Mattoon, Illinois, by forcing the line between Charleston and Mattoon, owned by the Central Illinois Traction Company, to become one of the first into receivership. This was due to damage claims for an accident that cost the lives of 18 people and injured 50 others. One of the first signs of the financial instability of the interurban companies reared its ugly head during World War I. Costs of materials and labor were increasing, but the electric traction companies could not raise fares, as most of them were set by city franchise agreements. On 21 November 1928, Rose Polytechnic Institute lost the President of the school, Frank Caspar Wagner, when he drove his car into the path of the Terre Haute, Indianapolis & Eastern train while leaving the school. Wagner was trying to cross the THI&E tracks to turn onto National Road (US 40) from the West drive into the school grounds. The train hit Wagner’s coupe at more than 40 miles per hour. It took over 100 car dragging yards for the motorman to finally stop the train. The irony of the accident is that the West Drive was created due to a member of the faculty of the school being killed, in a similar manner, by trying to the leave the school grounds using the Middle drive. Dr. Shelton Johonnot was killed in 1924 at a crossing that did not have enough visibility. 1930 saw the creation of the Indiana Railroad, described as “one big traction empire.” Before the Terre Haute, Indianapolis & Eastern became officially part of the Indiana Railroad, the company had abandoned 188 miles of traction line in late 1930. In 1931, the Indiana Railroad dropped another 70 miles of line. 1932 saw the loss of another 205 miles. Sleeper service, which was a service that started in Indiana on the interurban connecting Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio, in 1903, was cut from the Indianapolis-Louisville trains. This was one of the last such services in the entire country. The Indiana Railroad found itself in big trouble. While it was abandoning lines all over the state, the company did place 35 new cars to limited service from Indianapolis to both Fort Wayne and Louisville. The economic recession of the period hurting the company stability was compounded by a six week strike by Indiana Railroad employees. The company would end all rail operations in 1941. Before the entry of the United States into World War II, the end of local electric street car service occurred in Terre Haute, Vincennes, Evansville, Anderson, South Bend and Mishawaka. Indianapolis would end electric street car service when the College Avenue line ran its last cars on January 9th, 1953.