The Chicago – New York Electric Air Line Railroad (CNY) was a proposed high-speed electric air-line railroad between Chicago and New York City in the early 20th century. At roughly it would have been over shorter than the two primary steam railroads on that route, the New York Central Railroad and Pennsylvania Railroad. The promoters' vision proved wildly optimistic and, in the end, only a short interurban route in the vicinity of Gary, Indiana was built and operated. It was the most ambitious of several such proposals at the dawn of electric railroading, all of which ended in failure.
The trade magazine Railway Age critiqued the project at the time it was announced in July 1906 and gave this damning judgment: "Speaking seriously, for the moment, about this fraudulent investment scheme one is in doubt whether to wonder most at the gigantic effrontery of the perpetrators, the gullibility of the poor dupes who will flood the mails with their subscriptions, or the carelessness if not cupidity of the newspaper publishers who seem to sanction the swindle by giving it publicity."
History
Background
The Air Line scheme was not the first proposed high-speed electric railway in the USA. In 1893 Dr. Wellington Adams promoted a Chicago–St. Louis route with a maximum operating speed of . Adams believed the new railroad could be built in a year for $5.5 million. Trade publications ridiculed the proposal, and it went nowhere.
Elsewhere, global developments in electric railroading was proceeding apace at the turn of the century. In 1903, a railcar from Siemens & Halske and AEG reached on the experimental Marienfelde–Zossen military railway outside Berlin. Commercial projects, however, did not progress. Proposed electric railways such as Berlin–Hamburg and Wien–Budapest proved too expensive.
Several interurbans in the United States had made fast demonstration runs at the same time. In 1903 an interurban on the Aurora, Elgin & Chicago Railway covered the 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. In 1905 Pacific Electric mogul Henry E. Huntington made the Los Angeles–Long Beach run () in 15 minutes in a private railcar at an average speed at , higher than for the projected Air Line trains.
Proposal Alexander C. Miller (1852–1918) had been the chief dispatcher of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad before founding the Aurora Trust and Savings Bank in his home town of Aurora, Illinois (served by the Aurora, Elgin & Chicago Railway) and establishing the Miller Train Control Corporation to market his invention of a railroad signalling block system.
In July 1906, he took out advertisements in Chicago newspapers for the Chicago–New York Electric Air Line Railroad Company, offering 20,000 $100 shares in this firm (the unit shares were later reduced to $25). The company avoided raising funds through bonds or the money market, and relied entirely on selling shares. This was important later — there was to be no need to pay interest on capital. The form of the name — Chicago before New York — demonstrated the focus of the initial advertising campaign.
The proposed physical characteristics of the project were impressive, and far ahead of contemporary practice: Quadruple track (later reduced to double) on a right of way, grades not exceeding 1%, no grade crossings, and a straight-line route which, at , would be shorter than other routes. Further, it was promised that there would be no curves requiring speeds below . Trains would run at an average , and complete the journey between Chicago and New York in 10 hours at a flat fare of $10. The motive power was to be electric locomotives powered by a third rail -there were no working prototypes of these yet.
At the time the two fastest steam-hauled trains between New York and Chicago, the New York Central Railroad's 20th Century Limited and the Pennsylvania Railroad's Pennsylvania Special (forerunner of the more famous Broadway Limited), each required twenty hours to make the journey.
Part of the proposal was that the main line would avoid towns and cities on the way, but that these would be provided with feeder spurs or branches. Mentioned were Toledo, Cleveland and Pittsburgh (although the branch to the last named would have been lengthy).
Inception
The Air Line Company was set up to be a holding company, with the actual construction done by a series of local firms established under state laws. The first, and only, one of these was incorporated under the state laws of Indiana on April 16, 1904 and was the Goshen, South Bend and Chicago Railroad (GSB&C). It contracted the Co-operative Construction Company (formed for the purpose by one of the promoters named Jonathon D. Price) to begin work, and obtained the necessary land by having another promoter, Colonel Upshaw P. Hord, persuade local farmers to exchange land in return for shares.
Construction began ceremonially on September 1, 1906 at La Porte, Indiana, on the first of the feeder branches from downtown to a rural location dubbed South La Porte where the junction with the main line and the operating headquarters were to be. Miller cut the first sod there with a silver spade, and there was much junketing. However, serious work only began in the New Year. The branch took until June 15, 1907 to finish and open, and this slow progress was the first sign of problems.
For the opening, the CSB&C bought two standard wooden combine interurban electric passenger cars from the Niles Car and Manufacturing Company. As a publicity stunt, their paintwork included destination names reading New York at one end and Chicago at the other. Down each side was Chicago Air Line New York. The car barn built at South La Porte had a fascia reading Chicago New York Air Line, and Air Line was to be the name used for the passenger service of the CSB&C throughout its history.
Meanwhile, the promoters had begun the publication of a monthly periodical boosting the scheme, the Air Line News, in October 1906. This dramatized every development in the construction work, for example: "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". The editor was Charles Burton, a veteran Indiana journalist and former printer of the state's official publications. The project was trumpeted nationally, stock sold with great rapidity and, by the end of the year, the company had 15,000 shareholders and funds of $2,000,000.
Building the main line
The section of the main line that was actually built, , ran from South La Porte westwards to a location north of Woodville named Goodrum after George C. Goodrum, a major shareholder from Fall River, Massachusetts. There were three railroad crossings in this distance, over the Pere Marquette Railway, Monon Railroad and the Wabash Railroad. Each of these was provided with a heavy girder bridge, approached by immense fills to keep the gradients down. The fill material came from two deep cuts on the route. The track was built to steam-road standards, allegedly with 85 pound (38.5 kg) rail and white oak ties — in fact, rails were used. Every sixth tie was extra long to accommodate the future third conducting rail, although a trolley wire was strung to power the cars as a temporary measure. Only a single track was laid, although there was space for a second. Investors were taken out to view these two portions of the line in operation, and the continuing work. However, further progress continued to be slow and the depression of 1907–1908 worsened the financial problems arising.
The main line was opened to Westville Road (Route 421), just east of the Monon Railroad bridge, in June 1908. To generate some revenue, an amusement park called "Air Line Park" was set up west of the Pere Marquette Railroad bridge. This proved very successful, and thousands visited on weekends when a ten-cent shuttle service from La Porte was provided. This was to be the only public service on the main line for the next three years, running from La Porte to Westville Road and back.
The eventual downfall of the Air Line scheme arose as a result of the capital expended on crossing Coffee Creek, a minor watercourse running west of the Wabash Railroad bridge. To keep to the advertised grade prescribed by the incredibly stringent engineering specifications, the GSB&C engineered a monstrous fill across the little creek's valley, wide and long and containing a steel trestle for stability. The extent of this work meant that the line only opened to Goodrum on November 1, 1911.
The immense expense occasioned by this engineering work, and some alleged (but never prosecuted or substantiated) accounting irregularities as well as other putatively fraudulent practices, led to the failure of the main line to extend beyond a dozen and a half miles through the Indiana countryside. The GSB&C only ever ran a total of on its own tracks, according to its official reports.
Gary and Interurban Railway The GSB&C Air Line railway company quickly morphed into an electric railway system serving the new city of Gary, and this process was underway even before the Coffee Creek fill was finished in 1911.
Gary came into being when the United States Steel Corporation constructed a new steelworks on a virgin site on Lake Michigan in the spring of 1906, and when the city was platted, three main streets were created wide enough to include reserve track streetcar lines. Hence, the streetcar service could use equipment of interurban standard, and this was reflected in the name of the streetcar company founded on July 18, 1907, the Gary and Interurban Railway. There was no initial official connection with the GSB&C, but the Co-operative Construction Company building the latter's main line was also responsible for its construction.
The system opened on May 20, 1908, and by year's end had a spine route north to south on Broadway. This ran from the steelworks main gate at 4th Avenue to the city limits at the Little Calumet River bridge, and two crosstown routes ran west of this to the city limits—one on 5th Avenue and the other on 11th Avenue (10th Avenue from Broadway to the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge).
The first major extension of the system was to Hammond to the west, when the 11th Avenue line was extended via Clark Road, 9th Avenue, Summer (now 165th) Street and Sibley Street to a terminus loop on Calumet-State-Hohman. This opened on February 8, 1910.
Unfortunately, as part of its franchise the streetcar company agreed with the city to limit fares within city limits to three cents for any ride, or ten for a quarter (25 cents). No provision was made for inflation.
Valparaiso and Northern Railway Meanwhile, on 25 August 1908 the GSB&C incorporated an independent but wholly owned subsidiary company, the Valparaiso and Northern Railway, to build two feeder branches connecting to the main line at Goodrum and serving Valparaiso to the south and Chesterton to the north. Again construction work dragged on, for the lines opened from Valparaiso to the popular recreational destination of Flint Lake on July 4, 1910, Chesterton to Goodrum on 18 February 1911, Flint Lake to Woodville on October 7, 1911 and from Woodville over a bridge crossing the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad line to Goodrum on February 17, 1912. The GSB&C was then given an east-to-north curve to connect to the new Valparaiso to Chesterton through line at Goodrum, while excavation continued to the west to the fourth railroad bridge which was to be over the B&O at a very skew angle.
Gary Connecting Railways