One hundred years later and still no high speed trains between Chicago and New York! We have high speed planes instead on this route, that is, if you don’t mind going 30 miles or more out of your way as planes don’t depart Union Station or arrive at Grand Central Station, or mind eating peanuts instead of dinner in the diner. That’s a hundred years of progress?

We have government officials thinking that passenger trains are profitable and that the Northeast Corridor supports the long distance portion of the Amtrak system, two wonderful ideas if only they were true. With the prospects of terrorism, the traveling public would like an alternative to flying. Florida voters did successfully vote a high speed railway amendment (a chad-less ballot was used), but the money to construct the system has not been approved. So we are still stuck with possible corridor trains moving at about the same speed as they did 100 years ago.

RAILROAD HISTORY and the Newsletter are getting a lot alike recently, according to the complaints of Tom DeFazio and others. Not that I deliberately sought technically oriented articles to publish in a more attractive setting, but authors provided me with just that sort of fare and color advertising gave color and coated paper. Nice kind of complaints for me!

Jim Larson has relinquished providing locomotive rosters and steam locomotive construction numbers after several years of dedicated and much appreciated service to our members. They are still available from R&LHS Archives Services, PO Box 600544, Jacksonville, Florida 32260-0544.

I wish to remember two contributors who have recently passed on. John Humiston’s list of all complete loops of trackage in the US will be published in a future issue. H. Lansing Vail helped considerably with identifying the Lake at Effingham, Illinois. They shall be missed by me and many others.

COVER: Reconstructed from the Chicago Tribune.

Recent proposals for high speed rail bring to mind some unusual projects from 1906. The Chicago-New York Electric Air Line Railroad (C-NYEAL) was described in illustrated articles in Railroad Stories (May 1933), Railroad Magazine (December 1956) and Trains (October 1946) and is worth a note in history, but may now be known only to older readers. It first came to public attention in a full page announcement in The Chicago Sunday Tribune of July 8, 1906, which appears as a news release although in fact it was an advertisement, complete with a coupon to order shares.

The C-NYEAL was to be an electrified railroad built to high standards, straight as an arrow (once it got around Lake Michigan) avoiding all major cities (“spur” tracks would provide connections) from Chicago to New York. It would be 750 miles long, 160 miles shorter than the shortest existing route (the Pennsylvania Railroad), and planned to dispatch hourly trains in each direction on ten hour schedules with a fare of ten dollars a person, about half the prevailing cost and time on the steam roads. Stock, par value $100, was offered to early investors at $25 a share and enormous dividends were confidently promised, 13% on the first section across Indiana and probably 30% once the road was completed to New York. According to Blake A. Mapledorum in his reminiscences published in Railroad Stories, “When

stock was offered for sale at $25 a share the rush to get in the elevators was so great that the regular tenants were unable to get near their offices. Finally the building superintendent ordered the Air Line people to find other offices.” Some 15,000 people took shares during the first six months. Mapledorum says he was told on February 7, 1907, that the company had $2,200,000 in Chicago banks.

This fountain of gold was too good not to find imitators, and on August 19, 1906 The Sunday Tribune published an advertisement (labeled as such) for another project, the New York, Boston & Chicago Electric Railroad (NYB&CE). Whereas the Air Line avoided all cities, the more practical NYB&CE would serve Toledo and Cleveland, and continue east by way of Meadville, Williamsport, Stroudsburg, Paterson and Hackensack, taking only eleven more miles to do so and still claiming to make a trip to New York in ten hours or less. From New York it would continue via Waterbury, Hartford, and Worcester to Boston. The problem of crossing the Hudson river was ignored.

America was then in the exciting dawn of the “electric age.” The Manhattan elevated lines had been successfully electrified and the electrification of the approaches to Grand Central Terminal in New York was underway.

Nearer home, the Aurora, Elgin & Chicago’s fifty-seven mile third-rail route from the suburbs to the Windy City was proving profitable. Why not go all the way to New York?

The biggest reason why not, and the greatest obstacle to success was the immense amount of capital needed to construct 750 miles of straight double track on grades of no more than 1%, plus the cost of 16 power stations, a fleet of electric locomotives, numerous luxurious passenger cars, depots and other facilities. The promoters seem to have hoped that Midwesterners, accustomed to mostly flat countryside, knew little about the geography of Pennsylvania and northern New Jersey. The needed capital, underestimated as $150 million, was not likely to be provided by financial institutions, heavily invested in the steam railroads.

Among the promoters of the C-NYEAL some may have been naïve idealists: a fast electric railroad from Chicago to New York was theoretically within the capability of engineering in 1906. But the idealists were clearly being used by financial sharks, and the NYB&CE people in particular may have only been trying to bilk the public.

A sign of good intentions on the part of the C-NYEAL is that in 1907 the company actually did build some twenty miles of straight track on a well-ballasted roadbed from nowhere to nowhere in La Porte County, Indiana. Only one track was actually laid and a trolley wire was strung “temporarily” to substitute for the promised third-rail. Some bits of the right-of-way are said to be still visible nearly 100 years later.

The first announcement was signed by F. S. Mordaunt as Financial Agent, but in a matter of days he dissociated himself from the scheme in a letter to the editor of Railway Age. The announcement refers to unnamed men with railroad experience involved in the project and the August 5th and subsequent versions in The Tribune identified two: Alexander C. Miller, president of the Aurora Trust & Savings Bank is listed as president of the railroad. He had earlier been employed in the operating department of the Burlington, and Theron M. Bates, formerly General Superintendent of the Chicago & Alton Ry, is listed as secretary-treasurer. From other sources we know that Jonathan D. Price, former signal

construction engineer for the Burlington, organized the Co-operative Construction Co. to build the Air Line. No stockholder ever made a cent out of the C-NYEAL and according to Mapledorum several sued the company. He himself worked on the project for about a year and quit when his pay was held up. Miller was still president in 1912 when Poor’s Manual of Railroads listed the road for the last time. By then the directors had given up hope of reaching New York and the Air Line had become a holding company for the Gary & Interurban Railway. With the bankruptcy of that company in 1915 the Air Line disappeared.

The NYB&CE claimed that its executives were “not coal men or oil men but electric men” and identified four directors: H. S. Durant, president of the Durant Electric Co. of Chicago, E. J. Wehry, vice-president and general manager of the Arbuckle-Ryan Co. of Toledo, T. B. Whitted, southwestern sales manager of the Westinghouse Machine Co. of St. Louis, and the Hon. A. H. McVey, Judge of the District Court of Des Moines, Iowa. Their ad appeared only once in the Tribune, August 19, 1906, the company never laid any track, probably never intended to, and disappeared as quickly as it came.

In the issue of July 13, 1906, the editors of Railway Age devoted a page to analysis of the C-NYEAL project. The tone of the article can be judged from the following excerpts:

“Without a moment’s warning, without legislative, financial or physical preliminaries, without the assistance or even the previous knowledge of the lynx-eyed press, suddenly there has been launched into triumphant existence the Chicago-New York Electric Air Line Railroad, 750 miles long, straight as a string, level as a floor, alive with hourly trains hurrying the trust-emancipated common people between the two great cities in 10 hours without a stop, at the exhilarating speed of 75 miles an hour, for the inconsiderable sum of $10 … while ‘old railroad men can scarcely believe their eyes, and the officials of existing steam railroads are aghast with astonishment.’ All this and more,” the article continued, “is true, for we read it in a feature article occupying an entire page of the Chicago Sunday Tribune, a great journal whose imprint is the stamp of truth and whose mighty influence never would be given, and surely would not be sold, for any questionable

purpose. Moreover, we know the enterprise to beto be genuine, because we see with our own eyes a large, clear picture showing ‘One of the hundred-mile-an-hour electric engines that will take a train to New York in 10 hours,’ and below it a still larger map on which is indicated by a bold straight line the ‘Route of the ten-hour electric road between Chicago and New York.’ While the map leaves something to be desired in respect to geographical

knowledge, as it fails to show a single village or city on the route, yet this evidence that the road traverses an uninhabited country emphasizes the greatness of the enterprise as a direct through line, unconcerned with the trifling matter of intermediate and local traffic.”

The article continues by showing that earnings are likely to fall short of promised dividends by some $164,000,000!

One of the most unusual features of the Air Line project, which Railway Age did not fail to note, was the promise of free transportation for stockholders. According to the announcement, “The stock certificates are given a double value and put beyond the power of man to make them worth any less than par,” by a certificate printed on each entitling the holder to transportation when the road is in operation. “This means that no matter what the certificate is worth as stock, no matter what it is quoted at in the market, the bearer thereof can step onto a ten-hour train for New York and pay his or his friend’s fare with it. … Nothing on earth can wreck its value.” According to Mary Crane’s 1946 article in Trains, some investors did use their certificates for free rides over the 3.5 miles of a completed spur line from La Porte, Indiana, to “Air Line Park,” a recreational facility created by the railroad and the source of its only significant traffic.

Railway Age commented again on August 3, lambasting the Tribune: “… so long as the full-page ads. continue so long will it be presumptive evidence that the fools and their money are still being parted.” Then on August 31 Railway Age noted the appearance of “of a rival stock-selling enterprise under the sounding fiction of the ‘New York, Boston & Chicago Electric Railway.’ There is internal evidence in the advertisement,” the article continues, “that the later scheme is the device of somebody who had to do with concocting the original stock-selling project, but was frightened out by the dangerous propinquity of his associates to the laws against obtaining money under false premises. … Comparison of these two parallel schemes for deluding ‘the plain people’ into giving their savings for that which is naught shows interesting similarities and differences.” Among the differences was the NYB&CE’s promise to serve inhabited places. In addition, its trains would not be hauled by locomotives, but would consist of multiple-unit electric cars, externally resembling those on the Manhattan elevated lines but with luxurious interiors. The company expected to run only six four-car trains a day in each direction, rather than the hourly trains of the C-NYEAL, and would charge 2 cents a mile for their 761 mile routed: $15.22 in contrast to the $10 of the Air Line. Estimates of dividends were also more modest:

only 6 to 10%. The price of the stock of each road was the same — $25 a share for initial investors, par value $100 — but unlike its rival the NYB&CE required payment in full and did not offer free transportation to its stockholders. Instead, its unusual pitch was addressed to potential railroad employees. Stockholders were to be given preference in applying for thousands of jobs the railroad promised to create.

The “announcement” of the C-NYEAL and the “advertisement” of the NYB&CE provide an interesting sample of the rhetoric of promotion practiced at the outer limits of legality or beyond at the beginning of the twentieth century. The C-NYEAL announcement consists of seven columns, running to nearly 8000 words and divided by headings in larger black type: for example, How the Great Electric Road Came to Be a Reality (it wasn’t yet, but the announcement refers to “work now going on” and twice implies that “surveys” had been made of the entire route); How Passenger Traffic Pays Better than Freight (that is, if fast, clean, comfortable electric service is offered over a direct route); Wonderfully Level Route (across northern Pennsylvania?); No Makeshift Plans for Electric Road (it is to be built to the very highest standards, which will save money in the long run: crushed granite road bed, 100 lb steel rails, though in practice something lighter was used); New Electric Line Offers the Small Investor an Unusual Opportunity; The Time to Invest Is Now — Never Again Will the Price Be So Low, etc. The dominant rhetorical device is confident repetition of the same message in slightly different form: the greatness of the enterprize, the certainty of success, the vast fortunes to be made by a road built primarily for passenger traffic. Supporting this is a strong note of populist rhetoric: “The histories of most of the steam roads read like political melodramas. Bribery and corruption of State and National officials was looked upon as being essential as the laying of rails, industries were throttled, coal mines forced into line and rights-of-way were procured by the most desperate tactics. … The time has come when the people ought to own the railroads, and they are going to own them!” “When this road is built the farmer can look out upon his grain field with the content that comes from knowing that when the

harvest ripens the bulk of his earnings won’t go into the jaws of a greedy railroad as excessive freight charges. … No longer will the small shipper be fooled with the sickly excuse that ‘we can’t get cars,’ while he sees his big rivals go whisking along through ‘pull’ and favoritism.” Capital to build the railroad is to be raised solely by sale of stock. No bonds are to be issued, no financial institutions welcome, the road will belong to ordinary people. The C-NYEAL nominally kept to this promise, though bonds were issued later in the name of a subsidiary organized to try to get the road through Gary to the outskirts of Chicago.

The NYB&CE’s rhetoric is similar, but shorter, under 5000 words. It too is divided into headings: for example, One Hundred and Twenty-five Miles an Hour; Importance of the Project; Steam Railroads Doomed; Economies of Operation; Profits of Operation; Electricity to Supplant Steam; The Necessity of Competition (steam roads will be forced to electrify or fall into disuse); How Electric Traction Changes Transportation and Increases Economy (with statistics), Earnings of the New York, Boston & Chicago Line (total estimated net earnings $23,560,860 annually); For Employees Stockholders Have Preference, etc..

More modest profits are promised than by the Air Line and there is greater emphasis on the economy of electric operation, which might appeal to practical-minded investors. Populist rhetoric is also sounded, and it is with that the advertisement ends: “Thousands of competent and worthy men in the service of the steam roads have been crowded out of positions by the consolidation of interests that have taken place so numerously within the past ten years; thousands of others have been pushed aside to make room for relatives, and all these now have an opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities in the service of a railroad where nothing but merit will count.”

The NYB&CE’s ad never refers to the C-NYEAL, nor did the Air Line’s subsequent announcements in The Tribune take any notice of the NYB&CE. Both use some colorful writing: the NYB&CE’s ad, temporarily forgetting populism, describes how a business man will breakfast in Boston at 8, be in New York around 10 for two hours of  

meetings, then have lunch on the train and arrive in Chicago in time for a late evening dinner “in his club.” And we are given a vivid picture of a steam engine getting a train underway: “For hours before the train is put in motion, the locomotive is under steam, consuming coal, attended by engineer and fireman. Finally it is attached to the train and the signal given to start. There is a preliminary toot, a jerk, a struggle and the first car moves, then the second car begins to move and the third, and finally after much puffing and whirring of wheels and hissing of steam the train is in motion. Compare it with the electric train. Each car is a motor car, coupled in series in such a way that the control of all is at the command of one man in the first car. … Immediately, therefore, every wheel begins to turn, and while the steam train is puffing and blowing about what it is GOING to do, off runs the electric train under a full headway of power.” The fanciest writing in the Air Line’s announcement describes a race on the Aurora line: “Ladies on the electric cars wave a swift good-bye to the passengers on the two steam roads which run parallel to it, the electric cars going so fast that the steam cars seem not to move at all.” Or elsewhere, of the advantages of electric traction: “No smoke or cinders smooch the passengers, no sickening stench from cattle trains befouls the air. …” The NYB&CE ad confidently predicted the obsolescence of steam power. They were right, of course, but they were about forty years premature, and the victor proved to be not the straight electric but the diesel electric.

There were other ill-fated railroad projects brewing in 1906. The same issues of Railway Age that discuss the C-NYEAL and NYB&CE carry notices about two others. The August 31 issue attributes to Joseph Ramsey, Jr., former president of the Wabash, a plan to take over and extend three short railroads in Pennsylvania as nucleus of an electric air line from New York to Chicago to be known as the Keystone Air Line. The October 26th issue reports Mr. Ramsey as denying any connection with the two other electric lines, which he describes as “bunco games,” and saying his road is to be a steam railroad designed to haul freight and passengers, “but it may be we shall find electric locomotives best when the road is ready.” He subsequently renamed his road the New York, Pittsburgh and Chicago and went ahead with

surveys, but the project fizzled and its assets were acquired at foreclosure by a new company under the same name formed by Leonor F. Loree of the Delaware and Hudson as part of his plans for a “fifth” trunk line with the backing of the Harriman estate. This project had a complex history of its own that deserves telling on another occasion.

But an even vaster project was brewing: the Trans-Alaska-Siberian Railway, incorporated (where else?) in New Jersey, and reported in the November 2nd issue of Railway Age. It was to extend 3750 miles, with two electrified tunnels under the Behring Straits. The editors took a hopeful view of this proposal: “Reputable names are connected with the incorporated enterprises in the United States, Asia and Europe, and it would not be wise to assert that some time trains may not be running between New York and St. Petersberg.” Alas, we are still waiting.

A transcript of the two ads from the Tribune is available for $10, postpaid, from G. A. Kennedy, PO Box 271880, Fort Collins CO 80527. 

“The boy sitting on the upended trunk watches over the boxes, luggage and maybe his sister [white sweater?] hiding behind him, on the wooden station platform while an ALCO Number 22 gets a drink.” That was my caption in the spring of 2000 when I ran this mystery photo before. It was tentatively identified as Northwestern Pacific 4-4-0 #22 by Joe Strapac. But take a closer look at the “ore” cars filled with something light colored behind the engine, more ore cars in the distance. Is this Bayview, Idaho, in the 1912 - 1927 era of lime rock hauling to Spokane, Washington? That would make this a view looking north with Cape Horn Peak, the lime kiln and docks on Lake Pend Oreille to the right and a wye to the left. Twelve miles in the opposite direction is Corbin Junction with the Spokane International main line and then 38 miles more to Spokane.

“The Spokane International locomotives were given the interesting handrail that comes down from both sides and across the lower front of the smoke box. Other less distinctive features would also suggest that this could be an SI engine. They had a #22, ALCO/Rogers #40741 of

TRADING POST

Submissions should be made to the Newsletter editor to arrive by October 15 ,2003, for inclusion in the next issue. All items subject to available space and editorial decisions as to content. New Trading Post items are posted on our Website: www.rlhs.org.

SELLING - Russian Rail Transport, 1836-1917, colorful history of Russian railways beginning in 1836 until the Bolsheviks took power during WW1. $32.00 USA, $36.00 foreign. Also available is the 118-page biography, Franz Anton von Gerstner, Pioneer Railway Builder, by Mikhail and Margarita Voronin. $28.00 USA, $32.50 foreign. Checks payable to Languages of Montour. John C. Decker, 112 Ardmoor Avenue, Danville PA 17821. <JDecker@Uplink.net>

New RR Books

Limited, Locals and Expresses in Indiana, 1838 - 1971 by Craig Sanders gives us a comprehensive history of intercity passenger service in Indiana, from the time railroads began to develop in the state in the mid-19th century through May 1, 1971, when Amtrak began operation. 288 pages, 16 maps, 88 photos, ref., index, 8½x11 cloth. $49.95. Indiana University Press, 601 N Morton Street, Bloomington IN 47404-3797. (812) 855-8817.

Southwest Chapter
Report of Activities for 2002
1. The Southwest Chapter continues to maintain and preserve S.P. 2-8-0 locomotive No. 3420 as well as a number of pieces of freight and passenger rolling stock including the heavyweight 14-section Pullman, the James Watt.

2. The Southwest Chapter has joined in a consortium of rail related organizations to support the Railroad and Transportation Museum of El Paso. The museum presently has donated space in the old Hilton Hotel building in downtown El Paso for a model and photo gallery and is attempting to obtain a historic railroad depot for a permanent location. The Southwest Chapter has presented grant funds to the museum for preliminary expenses.
3. The Southwest Chapter assisted with research and information for the movement and restoration of historic 4-4-0 locomotive EP&SW No.1, built in 1857. The chapter provided important background information for the restoration supervisor. It is expected that the Chapter, in association with the RR Museum of El Paso, will provide an interpretive
 

exhibit on the history of No.1 when it is installed in its display area in the new transit terminal.
4. The Southwest Chapter also is coordinating with the Paso del Norte Streetcar Preservation Society in the preservation of nine 1937 PCC streetcars, some of which might be restored to operating condition by the transit authority, Sun Metro.
5. The Southwest Chapter will participate in Heritage Week and will make speakers available to speak on railroad history and the coming of the railroads to El Paso in 1881.
6. The Chapter continues to hold monthly meetings on the second Wednesday and continues to publish the monthly newsletter, the EP&SW Flyer, edited by Elsie Voigt, of Fort Davis, Texas.
Submitted by Ron Dawson 3/25/03

2004 R&LHS National Convention

The 2004 R&LHS National Convention will be held in Ogden, Utah, Thursday, June 3, through Sunday, June 6, 2004, hosted by the Golden Spike Chapter. Details as to host hotel and convention activities will be available later but plans are being made for a tour of the TRAX rapid transit facilities in Salt Lake City, a ride on the “Heber Creeper”, visits to the Ogden Union Station museums and tour to the Golden Spike National Historic Site at Promontory. See Central Pacific No. 60, “Jupiter” and Union Pacific No. 119 in action. Plan on it!