Weekend Update 8/7/22

[sd45elect2000]

I went to eighth grade and high school in Delafield, Wis.   I could get a weekend at home in Brookfield, Ill. as long as my grades were good.  I’d bum a ride after classes on Friday from one of the instructors to Waukesha where I could catch a bus into Milwaukee.   
North Shore to Chicago….frequent 90 minute service.   If I was lucky I could catch an Electroliner and enjoy an Electroburger as well!   Arrival near the Greyhound Terminal where I could catch a Bluebird Coach Lines bus to less than a 100 feet from my house.  Total travel time…less than five hours….during “rush hour”.   Driving time…about the same (but no car).  Flight time today…same but $$$ limo to and from the airports.
Pre-1940 I could have walked to the interurban in Delafield and cut another hour off the trip.
We’ll spend millions on high speed rail and still not recreate the door to door times that were commonplace
with 1910 technology!
Charlie Vlk

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This could a Milwaukee Delafield train at a shelter somewhere East of Oconomowoc.

[John]

[TiogaTracks]

We’ll spend millions on high speed rail and still not recreate the door to door times that were commonplace with 1910 technology!
Charlie Vlk

You’re so right, Charlie.  I spent a decade running streetcars on weekends at Rockhill Trolley Museum, and the main thing that was hard to explain to people was how car-free life with a good street railway was better in some ways.  The idea of trusting that service was so frequent that you didn’t have to check a schedule (or fret about missing the first trolley) are so hard for us to grasp today.  That and how the low cost of labor made it all possible, and how it makes it nigh impossible today… I sure hope to see that change in my lifetime.

And I love the Silverliner, Randy! Does someone make a decal set for the intricate shadowlining?  I’m a bit jealous of those who have gotten to run interurban cars, my museum didn’t have any traditional interurbans in operation.  Though I guess the P&W Brill Bullet counts!

-Steven

[sd45elect2000]

You’re so right, Charlie.  I spent a decade running streetcars on weekends at Rockhill Trolley Museum, and the main thing that was hard to explain to people was how car-free life with a good street railway was better in some ways.  The idea of trusting that service was so frequent that you didn’t have to check a schedule (or fret about missing the first trolley) are so hard for us to grasp today.  That and how the low cost of labor made it all possible, and how it makes it nigh impossible today… I sure hope to see that change in my lifetime.

And I love the Silverliner, Randy! Does someone make a decal set for the intricate shadowlining?  I’m a bit jealous of those who have gotten to run interurban cars, my museum didn’t have any traditional interurbans in operation.  Though I guess the P&W Brill Bullet counts!

-Steven

Thanks, yes the Silverliner was a decal set from Streamstyle, I don’t think they are available anymore though.
Rockhill does have a Liberty liner…

Randy

[cec209]

St Dennis is a MARC stop really close to BWI that also has excellent CSX railfanning. Thus attendance there on a Saturday or Sunday has long been referred to as “going to church.”

Makes perfect sense. I thought it might have some oblique reference to the Basilica Cathedral of Saint-Denis in the suburb of Saint-Denis just north of Paris where the kings of France are buried.
Thanks, Charlie

[TiogaTracks]

Thanks, yes the Silverliner was a decal set from Streamstyle, I don’t think they are available anymore though.
Rockhill does have a Liberty liner…

Randy

You bet they do!  I even rode the cab on its first outing in the new millennium (it was parked from the mid-1990s through, I think, 2011).  I say RODE the cab, because we had the GE 25-ton diesel shoving with all its might on the inbound end to push the train up the hill.  It was supposed to be a track work day, but the project was done early, so the guys in charge pulled “The Liner” out just because they could.  I couldn’t believe no one else wanted the operator’s seat, so lucky me “the new college kid” got it.

I never did run the train under its own power though, I passed a couple times to give other volunteers a chance.  Now I’m too happy with my home to want to spend frequent weekends away, but I could certainly go back… and this conversation makes me start to want to.

This photo was much later, after the Liberty Liner was repaired enough to run, and cosmetically touched up a bit.  Good memories for sure!

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-Steven

[nkalanaga]

Steven:  Today, we could have the same frequent service with automated trains.  Much easier than self-driving cars, and it wouldn't be hard to develop an "intelligent" computer that could tell when everyone was on/off the car.

No need for steering, and anyone dumb enough to get in the way would be run over, regardless of who/what was at the throttle.

[bbunge]

You’re so right, Charlie.  I spent a decade running streetcars on weekends at Rockhill Trolley Museum, and the main thing that was hard to explain to people was how car-free life with a good street railway was better in some ways.  The idea of trusting that service was so frequent that you didn’t have to check a schedule (or fret about missing the first trolley) are so hard for us to grasp today.  That and how the low cost of labor made it all possible, and how it makes it nigh impossible today… I sure hope to see that change in my lifetime.

-Steven

As an Ohio boy who grew up weekends at the Ohio Railway Museum, these days I'm gob-smacked at the amazing network Interurbans that crisscrossed the mid west 1905-1930.  These railroads dropped directly into city street car systems, so in many places, yes, you might have been able to walk down the street and catch a car to a city across the state.  I found it amazing to think in the late 1920's the Cincinnati and Lake Erie offered overnight package delivery between Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus and Cleveland. 

Several of the systems I've read about were profitable for just a few years early in the century but started to tank quickly as automobiles came along and roads improved.  The depression killed off many of the mid west systems. 

[Sumner]

Made it to here ...



... Sunday and a little further.  Build pages ( HERE ).

Sumner

[ncbqguy]

LOL - one seat service!
I don’t think the cost of labor, at least related to paycheck $, is to blame.
Government interference has rendered many things impossible.   There are so many fingers in any project…lawyers, advocacy groups, environmental, not in my backyarders, that most private enterprise is dead.   
The red tape and legal burden makes preliminary studies more expensive than what the actual construction cost should be…to say nothing about the time delay in actually getting to doing work.
Our transportation system would look more like Japan or Europe if what we had in the 1940’s had been allowed to develop instead of artificially subsidized autos, trucks and airplanes over privately owned rail.
Charlie Vlk

[sd45elect2000]

The Death blow to the trolleys was the government anti trust actions that separated the power company and trolley owners. Before the lawsuit the trolleys and the power company’s were under the umbrella of the TMER&L company ( in Milwaukee) After the government ordered divesture the power company was called Wisconsin electric power company WEPCO and the transportation was the Milwaukee Electric Railway and Transport company. TMER&T. TMER&T had zero money and quickly made the decision to get rid of the transport as soon as possible . Many trolley lines across the country were tied to the power companies. In my view they had a built in subsidy from the power generation business ,all in private ownership, the government regulated the trolleys out of business and now they are regulating the power generators out of business.

Ronald Reagan once said “ the scariest you’ll ever hear is I’m from the government, I’m here to help”.

For more info if you are interested in the Milwaukee lines I suggest “let there be light” by Forrest Macdonald and TM CERA bulletin 112 by Joseph Canfield.

Randy

[Nato]

      Everyone even the least bit interested in High Speed Rail should buy a copy of the book " Fifty Years of Amtrak Trains"  by David C. Warner and Bruce Goldberg. A Comprehensive Survey of Amtrak Routes:1971-2021. Not a cheap book $79.95. From White River. Every route that ever operated, or was proposed is shown, maps, schedules, hundreds of color photos from different eras. Semi-High Speed 110 MPH. routes covered. Nate Goodman (Nato). Salt Lake, Utah.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

The Death blow to the trolleys was the government anti trust actions that separated the power company and trolley owners. Before the lawsuit the trolleys and the power company’s were under the umbrella of the TMER&L company ( in Milwaukee) After the government ordered divesture the power company was called Wisconsin electric power company WEPCO and the transportation was the Milwaukee Electric Railway and Transport company. TMER&T. TMER&T had zero money and quickly made the decision to get rid of the transport as soon as possible . Many trolley lines across the country were tied to the power companies. In my view they had a built in subsidy from the power generation business ,all in private ownership, the government regulated the trolleys out of business and now they are regulating the power generators out of business.

Ronald Reagan once said “ the scariest you’ll ever hear is I’m from the government, I’m here to help”.

For more info if you are interested in the Milwaukee lines I suggest “let there be light” by Forrest Macdonald and TM CERA bulletin 112 by Joseph Canfield.

Randy

Lets not romanticize those power/trolley companies though.

They were regulated for good reasons.

[ncbqguy]

Guys
Beautiful North Shore and TMER&L cars!
Very tempting to model (squirrel!) but too much other unused stuff waiting!
Charlie Vlk

[DKS]

The Death blow to the trolleys was the government anti trust actions that separated the power company and trolley owners. Before the lawsuit the trolleys and the power company%u2019s were under the umbrella of the TMER&L company ( in Milwaukee) After the government ordered divesture the power company was called Wisconsin electric power company WEPCO and the transportation was the Milwaukee Electric Railway and Transport company. TMER&T. TMER&T had zero money and quickly made the decision to get rid of the transport as soon as possible . Many trolley lines across the country were tied to the power companies. In my view they had a built in subsidy from the power generation business ,all in private ownership, the government regulated the trolleys out of business and now they are regulating the power generators out of business.

Ronald Reagan once said %u201C the scariest you%u2019ll ever hear is I%u2019m from the government, I%u2019m here to help%u201D.

For more info if you are interested in the Milwaukee lines I suggest %u201Clet there be light%u201D by Forrest Macdonald and TM CERA bulletin 112 by Joseph Canfield.

Randy

For a while the popular tale was that trolleys died due to a conspiracy between tire companies, bus manufacturers and refineries.

However, this makes much more sense (and satisfies Occam's Razor): https://www.vox.com/2015/5/7/8562007/streetcar-history-demise