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Aurora-Elgin Area Street Cars & Interurbans The connecting Line Vol 4 w/dustjack
Aurora-Elgin Area Street Cars & Interurbans The Connecting Lines Vol 4
Hard Cover w/ Dust jacket
200 pages
Copyright 1993
CONTENTS
Overview of Street and Interurban Railways In The Aurora - Elgin Area7
Fox & Illinois Union Railway Company Yorkville - Morris10
Aurora, Plainfield & Joliet Railway Joliet, Plainfield & Aurora (1903 - 1907), Joliet & Southern (1907 - 1914) and Aurora, Plainfield & Joliet (1914 - 1924)34
Chicago, Aurora & DeKalb Railroad Aurora, DeKalb & Rockford Electric Traction Company76
DeKalb - Sycamore & Interurban Traction Company DeKalb - Sycamore Electric Company104
Woodstock & Sycamore Traction Company118
Elgin & Belvidere Electric Company Elgin, Belvidere & Rockford Railway Company138 Belvidere City Railway174
Volume 1 covers The Elgin, Aurora & Southern Traction Company, and The Fox River Division of The Aurora, Elgin & Chicago Railroad 1901 - 1923, both street cars and interurban.
Volume 2 covers The Aurora, Elgin & Fox River Electric Company 1923 - 1935, Aurora Street Scenes, Early Transportation in Aurora and Elgin, and miscellaneous items.
Volume 3 covers The Third Rail Division of The Aurora, Elgin & Chicago Railroad, and The Chicago, Aurora & Elgin; 1901 - 1959.
OVERVIEW OF STREET & INTERURBAN RAILWAYS IN THE AURORA-ELGIN AREA Aurora and Elgin, Illinois were typical of small city America in 1900. They were high - spirited and competitive, owing their existence to crossing points of the Fox River with the first two railroads west of Chicago. Each was but thirty - five miles west of Illinois' major city, Chicago; but in those days, most of it was farm country. Each possessed its share of industry: Aurora - the general shops of the Burlington Railroad; Elgin - the famous Elgin Watch Company. Both had many other, but lesser - known, industrial concerns that altogether employed thousands of its citizens.
Besides the two cities, a dozen smaller municipalities straddled the mighty Fox in what today might be called a metropolitan area. All were alike - not bedroom suburbs, but mill towns dependent on the river. Naturally an area like this, though separated from the mighty Chicago, was perfect for the development of street railways. And it also mirrored the development of street railway properties throughout the Midwest, having electric street car systems in place in the 1890s, an early interurban system in the late 1890s, a major high speed line to Chicago and several smaller, less successful rural interurbans built between 1905 -1913. Most of the street railway properties, save the mighty Third Rail line to Chicago, were originally the promotions of local citizenry. Most of the operations built by 1903 were consolidated into the Aurora, Elgin and Chicago, taking that name between 1902 and 1906. These included the street car lines of Elgin and Aurora, the interurban line between them, and extended interurban lines to Yorkville and Carpentersville. Those built after 1903 remained independent from each other, although some had financial connections with other lines outside the region.
The development of the electric street railway took place in the United States in the mid - 1880s, with the first line in Illinois being built by 1889. Civic pride and the quest for investment profit put both Aurora and Elgin in a race to provide electric street cars at a very early date. The Elgin City Railway saw trolley cars operating on July 4, 1890, and the Aurora Street Railroad on March 16, 1891. Both cities had animal - powered street railway operations from the early 1880s, and local promoters included Colonel H.H. Evans and A.J. Hopkins from Aurora, both of whom later had other electric railway affiliations.
In the mid - 1890s, after extending lines throughout their respective cities, each company built lines beyond city limits to nearby towns: the Elgin system building one of the first interurbans in the U.S. north to Carpentersville and south to Geneva, both built in 1896.
The Aurora system, by 1896 affiliated with the Elgin system, built an interurban line north to Geneva, although not physically connected to the Elgin and Geneva line due to legal difficulties. It also built a line south to Oswego and Yorkville in 1900. At that time, all of these lines were purchased and succeeded by the Elgin, Aurora and Southern Traction Company, the prospectus of which is shown in Volume 1 of this set.
The EA & S was largely financed through a syndicate of investors known as Pomeroy - Mandelbaum, from the Cleveland area. At the same time, that group of investors began construction of the more famous and longer - lasting Aurora, Elgin and Chicago, linking, by 1909, four routes from the Fox Valley to downtown Chicago. The AE & C was built as a high speed, third rail - powered interurban line, running on double track from Chicago to Wheaton, the seat of DuPage County. It then split into two lines: one to Aurora and one to Elgin, each again splitting to serve Batavia, St. Charles, and Geneva. This was no mere rural trolley. It successfully served, and contributed to the development of a string of municipalities west from Chicago into "bedroom" suburbs. Probably no other line carried as many passengers per mile. Thirty - thousand riders a day used its fifty - two miles of line in the 1940s, by then renamed the Chicago, Aurora and Elgin Railroad.
Undoubtedly the success of the CA & E, often nicknamed "Third Rail" or "Roarin' - Elgin", lay in its fast route to the heart of Chicago, serving its communities east of Wheaton with often fifteen - minute interval midday service (147 trains daily during one era between Wheaton and Chicago, for example), as well as a friendly, locally - managed operating staff. So important was the line that, following a receivership (bankruptcy) due to World War I related problems, in 1922 it was reorganized and renamed the Chicago, Aurora and Elgin Railroad, and, during the 1920s was rebuilt and managed by Dr. Thomas Conway of Philadelphia, famous for his overhaul of several interurban lines. Conway sold out in 1925 to an even more famous investor in public utilities and interurbans, Samuel Instill, who, until a new bankruptcy brought about by the Depression in 1932, developed the line into the suburban operation it ultimately stood for.
While the bankruptcy of 1932 brought hard times to the CA & E, its existence was necessitated by its ridership. It made actual profits during the World War II years through 1952; was reorganized from bankruptcy in 1946; bought several new cars in 1945, but was forced to abandon passenger service between 1953 and 1957 due to the construction of the Congress Street Expressway, and the resulting loss of a one - seat ride into Chicago's loop. Freight service continued until 1959, and the line was torn up in 1962. Both Aurora and Elgin had other interurban routes radiating from their downtowns. Both had interurban lines North and South - with through cars running between the cities by 1900. These lines were owned, until 1923, by the Aurora, Elgin and Chicago, when a local Aurora company, The Western United Gas and Electric Company, purchased and rebuilt not only the interurban lines, but also the street car lines. Fifty - five new modern cars were purchased for the Aurora, Elgin and Fox River Electric Company as it became known. Street cars and interurbans gave way to buses during the early 1930s as the paved highway and auto made it uneconomical to continue rail service. The last trolley - an interurban car - ran for passengers March 31, 1935, ending almost forty - five years of electric operation in the Fox River Valley, except for the CA & E.
On a smaller scale, Elgin and Aurora both had interurban lines radiating to the farm country. Elgin was the terminus of the Elgin and Belvidere, which connected the named cities, with through operations to Illinois' second largest city, Rockford. The Elgin and Belvidere Electric Company opened for business on February 2, 1907 with great expectations, including those of Hamilton Browne of Geneva, its promoter. He hired the leading Electric Railway Engineer, Bion J. Arnold of Chicago, to build the line. (The prospectus is shown at the end of Volume 4 of this series and must be read to appreciate the optimism associated with building interurbans, as well as a detail of expected costs).
Arnold was the loser when Browne failed to pay for the line after it was built. Bion J. Arnold, hoping to recover at least his construction costs, ended up with the line - with little outside investment - not what he expected. He used his genius to innovate operating savings including the first automatic substation in 1915, and gasoline - powered generators for peak service periods. Despite through service to Rockford over the connecting Rockford and Interurban, and modernization of sorts in the late 1920s, traffic declined substantially due to lack of growth in the territory served and the coming of the automobile. By the time the line ceased operation in 1930, Arnold had lost his fortune of over a million dollars on keeping the line going. Radiating from the Aurora area, there were several lines. The first "independent" to be opened was the Joliet, Plainfield and Aurora, beginning operations on November 7, 1903 from Joliet to Plainfield and October 22, 1904 through to Aurora. It saw typical interurban traffic and profitability for its first decade, largely due to lack of competing parallel steam - railroads (although two steam lines did exist largely for freight), and its fine Electric Park at Plainfield (which was finally destroyed in a tornado during 1990). The line was purchased by the Joliet and Southern in 1907, an enterprise that expected to expand to St. Louis. That line went into receivership in 1914, partially as a result of expansion to Chicago Heights in 1909. The Aurora line was then separated becoming the Aurora, Plainfield and Joliet until abandonment with bus substitution on September 1, 1924.
The second independent line out of Aurora was the Chicago, Aurora and DeKalb, a proudly operated line with a pathetic source of revenue that ran through a lovely area called Bliss' Woods. It originally was built in 1905 as an interurban, but lacked money to electrify until 1910. The line saw no real profits, went twice into bankruptcy, and became the first of the lines to abandon, on January 31, 1923, uncharacteristically not because of road paving.
Also presented in these four volumes is the Fox and Illinois Union, which opened in 1913, having been promoted by Colonel H.H. Evans of Aurora, whose association with street railways began in 1882, and who later built what became the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway (steam). The Fox and Illinois Union was a connecting line between the AE & C at Yorkville and the Illinois River Valley cities - and interurban lines - at Morris. Its primary revenues came from grain elevators as freight service, and although discontinuing passenger service in 1924, continued as a freight operation until 1937 when the parallel "hard road" construction sealed its doom.
Two other interurban lines that completed a circle between Aurora and Elgin are presented in this series. The DeKalb - Sycamore line was built in 1902. While successfully serving DeKalb, it was unable to compete with the paving of parallel State Highway 23, nor with the loss of CA & D connections to Aurora; buses were substituted in 1924, which continued to operate for more than forty additional years. The DeKalb and Sycamore line was affiliated with the Rockford and Interurban, but never connected.
The connection between Sycamore and Marengo on the Elgin and Belvidere line was filled by a too - poor - to - electrify line built starting in 1910 and named the Woodstock and Sycamore Traction Co. It was operated by various gasoline - powered cars, including three built by McKeen. The investments of its local promoters, farmers and businessmen alike, all went down the drain when the road was torn up in 1918. Surprisingly, two of its famed McKeen cars went to Canada, operated on the Northern Alberta Railway, then served as work cars into the 1970s. J.D.J.
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