Interurban

One of the commercial attachés of the Department of Commerce in South America transmits the name and address of an engineer who desires to receive full information relative to an automotor for an interurban railway.

interurban car, interurban line, interurban railroad

On the steam roads, the engine, representing with its tender an enormous weight, is required to generate enough power not only for its own propulsion, but drag after it a train of cars. Several important consequences result from this difference between steam and electric traction. First, on the electric railway single cars may be used, taking their power as required under such headway as may be required to accommodate the traffic, while the steam engine must for the sake of economy be loaded somewhere near its capacity, so that the service is necessarily less frequent than that offered by the interurban.

Q. Took the interurban at Denison? A. Yes, sir. Q. And went from there to McKinney on the interurban?

The act was elective and included the hazardous employments listed (they fill 112 pages of print) and include railroads, mines, interurbans, logging, iron and steel manufacture, packing houses, construction work, etc., etc.

... but debits and credits arising from the operation of such street electric passenger railways, including railways commonly called interurbans, as are at the time of the agreement not under Federal control, shall be excluded.

Returning to Seattle we took the interurban to Everett, 32 miles north, $1.30 for the round trip

In 1945, Vancouver had 347 street cars (not counting interurbans)

Why did people ride the interurban? No one knows. If you had asked a rider, he might have said "Fast, convenient, comfortable, economical“ – yet those are the same reasons that people give for riding in automobiles.