Chicago – New York Electric Air Line Railroad
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The Chicago – New York Electric Air Line Railroad (CNYEALRR) was proposed in 1905 as a beeline-straight, double track electric railroad (an air-line railroad) 743 miles (1,196 km) long between Chicago and New York. It was not the first plan for an high-speed electric railway in the US – but it was the most ambitious one (Middleton 1968, p. 28).
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[edit] Description
Once completed, the service would have seen passenger coaches (at least five or six, according to several illustrations) pulled by third rail electric locomotives at a maximum speed of 100 miles per hour (160 km/h). The projected travel time was ten hours, i.e. an average speed of 74.3 miles per hour (119.6 km/h). (For comparison, the 20th Century Limited when inaugurated in 1902 took twenty hours to make the trip over an 800-mile (1,300 km) route, and 15.5 hours in later years; while as of 2005[update] the highway trip takes 12.1 hours over a 787-mile (1,267 km) route.) The Amtrak train Cardinal uses 23.3 hours[1] The title of Thomas R. Bullard's book, Faster than the Limiteds, reflects the ambitions of the project.
[edit] Electric railroading and planning before the Air Line
The Air Line was not the US’ first high-speed rail project. In 1893, the same year as the first interurban was opened in the USA, Dr. Wellington Adams promoted a Chicago–St. Louis air line electric railway (252 miles (406 km)) with a multiphase electrification system. General Electric was prepared to furnish equipment guaranteed to travel 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) in perfect safety. The line, to be completed within a year at a cost of 5.5 million dollars, was to be double tracked, with provision for two more tracks at a later date (Middleton 1968, p. 28).
When the planning of the Air Line started, electric railroading alreay had made huge progresses since 1893. In 1903, railcars from Siemens & Halske and AEG ran at above 200 km/h on the military experimental Marienfeld–Zossen outside Berlin (see Land speed record for rail vehicles). However, the physical laws which made rising infrastructure requirements and costs with rising speeds, were well-known by the railway and interurban companies. Therefore, European high-speed electrical railway projects from around 1900 (e.g. Berlin–Hamburg and Wien–Budapest) were too expensive to be realized (Krettek 1975, p. 47-49). But the US interurbans’ almost sudden success was inspiring. In 1903, an interurban on the Aurora, Elgin & Chicago Railway covered the 35 miles (56 km) between Aurora and Chicago in 34 minutes 39 seconds despite the loss of over 6 minutes in stops, and numerous speed reductions for steam railroads, trolley lines (tramways), and street and highway crossings (Middleton 1968, p. 67). In 1905, Pacific Electric mogul Henry E. Huntington had a private railcar which once made the Los Angeles–Long Beach run (20 miles (32 km) during 15 minutes; its average speed at 80 miles per hour (130 km/h) was higher than for the projected Air Line trains (Middleton 1968, p. 60).
[edit] The Air Line’s rise and fall
The project was trumpeted nationally, stock sold with great rapidity, sections of track and immense cuts-and-fills were built in the vicinity of Gary, Indiana and operated as interurban transit, and investors were taken out to view these portions of the line in operation. It was promoted by the monthly Air Line News, which dramatized every development in the construction work (e.g., "A huge Vulcan steam shovel is already on the job, taking big bites out of hills that stand in the path of the straight and level speedway that is to be the Air Line"}(Middleton 1968, p. 29).
The project had some weaknesses, and the depression of 1907-1908 worsened the problems. The immense expenses occasioned by the incredibly stringent engineering specifications, and some claimed (but never prosecuted or substantiated) accounting irregularities and other fraud, led to the failure of the main line to expand beyond several dozen miles through the Indiana countryside. The largest completed was a 19.2-mile (30.9 km) mile segment between LaPorte and Goodrum, Indiana.
[edit] After the Air Line
The project is called the greatest fiasco of the interurban era (Middleton 1968, p. 29). However, the completed portions became the foundation of Gary Railways, a successful interurban street railway system. And several other interurbans by as high standard as the Air Line – though at a much less scale – were built. In 1907, the Philadelphia and Western Railroad opened its Upper Darby–Strafford line near Philadelphia with maximum grades of 2 %, no grade crossings, and an absolute block signalling system (Middleton 1968, p. 109). And after World War I, the railway tycoon Samuel Insull upgraded the interurbans around Chicago, and station-to-station averages as high as 70 miles per hour were not infrequently attained (Middleton 1968, p. 67). Parts of these lines are in use even today.
Sections of the Air Line’s right-of-way and some of the colossal concrete bridge supports are still visible to this day.
In 1943, Commander Edwin J. Quinby wrote a lengthy history of the CNYEALRR for the publication Electric Railroads and closed the report with the following:
And as time goes on, electric railroad enthusiasts will visit the right-of-way over which the original construction work was done—and some of the more imaginative individuals will hear the deep-throated whistle of a big palatial interurban as its spirit still streaks along this romantic pike, and they will catch a glimpse of the golden inscription CHICAGO on one end of the car as it flashes by, and NEW YORK on the other end—hurrying, hurrying—for 36 years have passed since it started on its swift way and it hasn't reached either place.
[edit] Referanser
- ^ Amtrak Systems Timetable Fall 2009–Winter 2010, p. 77.
[edit] External links
- Ottmar Krettek 1975: Rollen Schweben Glieden – Unkonventionelle Verkehrsmittel. Alba Buchverlag, Düsseldorf. ISBN 3-87094-033-6 (in German).
- William D. Middleton: The interurban era, Kalmbach Publishing Co, fourth printing 1968; http://www.archive.org/stream/interurbanera00midd/interurbanera00midd_djvu.txt
- Archives of the Chicago-New York Electric Air Line Railroad
- Westville, Indiana and Vicinity...Then and Now (photos toward bottom)
- CNYEALRR discussion group and photo archives
