Interurbans - A great idea that had to fail

Among my other hobbies reading is one near the top of the list for devouring my time. I am not a "shopper" and don't like going out just to browse if you know what I mean. Book stores on the other hand are an entirely different matter. They are one of the few retail establishments where I can spend a great amount of time at the drop of a hat. Just ask my wife Linda where she parks me when she wants to spend an afternoon at the mall.

So when Half Priced Books opened a new store in Monroeville Linda took full advantage of the fact that it was right next to a Michaels a craft store and said we should "go visit" the book store. While there I found a rack of used magazines one of which caught my attention because it had a train picture on the front cover.

The magazine is American Heritage Inventions & Technology which I had never heard of but bought every back issue I could find on the shelves that day. I came home determined to subscribe as soon as I got to a computer. I was disappointed to find that I was the proverbial "day late and a dollar short" as the magazine had ceased publication. The really great news was they still publish on line and have archives of all the past print editions. What a treasure house of information. I have included a link to their website in this article.

From the issues that I had in hand I found this article that I think will be of interest to rail fans everywhere.

THE WRONG TRACK

At the dawn of the century, electric interurban trains looked like a sure-fire transportation revolution. But they were doomed from the start.

by George W. Hilton

In retrospect it’s obvious that the first decade of this century was a time of great innovation in transportation—the beginning of our revolutionary shift to the automobile. But, like so many revolutions, that one was not evident at the outset. The big news in the early 1900s was the nearly complete conversion of urban transportation from horses to electric streetcars. With Henry Ford’s Model T not even on the market yet, the electrification of intercity transport looked like the logical next big change.

To read the complete article follow THIS LINK to the web site. Enjoy!