Historical electrified mainline railroads

Add:
Butte, Anaconda & Pacific, a slightly smaller version of the Milwaukee in miles and voltage (2,400 vs 3,000). Short "Main Line" in Mont. It's newest locos went to CN for parts for the Montreal service.
Montreal Harbor Board, switching. It may have had some interconnection with CN, who did acquire some of the locos.
CN-GTW St. Clair Tunnel Co. Port Huron, Mich. - Sarnia, Ont. Smoke problems, mostly underwater?
Norfolk & Western, competing with Virginian over some mountains, also a PRR style electrification. In some years, PRR owned some of the N&W stock. In some years, N&W owned a lot of Lackawanna or Erie-Lackawanna stock, but they were different voltages.
Erie, Rochester, N.Y. suburban passenger service.
Mexicano, Mexico City - Vera Cruz. Main Line with mountains East to the sea shore. Lasted past nationalization to about 1960. The present dormant wires go North from Mexico City.
Costa Rico Northern? Main Line, one of the 2 "large" lines in the country.
West Jersey & Seashore, owned by PRR, later part of P-RSL. Suburban passenger and shorter lived 65 mile long "Bypass to the Main Line" tourist passenger.
Hershey Cuban, Main Line freight and passenger.
Havana Harbor Board, switching.
Both New Haven and PRR had early short lived experimental electric passenger service on branches.

CarterB wrote:I guess it will always be a difference of opinion about the Insull Lines in/around Chicago as to whether they were interurbans or commuter rail lines. CSS&SB seems to have been considered a 'main line' railroad rather than interurban, whereas CNS&M and CA&E interurbans, yet IC electric were called 'commuter'.

I thought the South Shore was originally considered an interurban. But it made it downtown via a steam road blurring the definition. And further blurring the definition, the IC Electric was almost completely separated from the "steam" tracks and operated exclusively with MU cars. So a case could be made that the IC electric was an interurban subsidiary of the IC (keep in mind that there are plenty of example, particularly today, of transit lines running parallel to "steam" railroads.

While the mainline, almost entirely grade separated, certainly has elements that put it more in the steam category, the South Chicago branch, running in street medians, is more interurban in nature.

OTOH, CA&E and North Shore made their downtown entrance over transit lines. In the end, it really doesn't matter. They were what they were and the South Shore is what it is.

What I am wondering, is that if Chicago was so hepped up about smoke abatement, why only the IC? I suppose the then Hyde Park brahmans must have had something to do with it? Surely with steam locos by the hundreds operating into IC Central Station, La Salle, Grand Central, Northwestern, Union, and Dearborn, there was plenty of "smoke" to abate downtown.

The IC was the only steam line that came "downtown" running along Michigan Avenue to Randolph Street. Everything else was west of the river or south of Van Buren Street. So the IC was the only line that got close enough to the heart of downtown (the north end of the loop where the government buildings are) for the smoke to bother the people in power. And in Chicago, that's king.

If you can find it in a library, an enormous tome was published early in the 20th century concerning smoke abatement on Chicago's railroads, which concluded with elaborate electrification proposals which were realized only on IC. There is extensive treatment of Chicago railroads of the time, including freight and long-gone commuter operations.

Since we have drifted away from "mainline" into a very interesting discussion, let's not forget the Boston, Revere Beach & Lynn Railroad. This was a very interesting operation, starting in 1875 with narrow guage steam equipment, the line electrified in 1928 - converting it's former Laconia built coaches and combines to MU electrified cars. The rail line was 9-1/2 miles long, connecting downtown Boston through East Boston (via ferry), and on to the city of Lynn. Remnants of this line remain today, and in fact a segment of the MBTA's "Blue Line" runs along it's former ROW. The railroad ceased operations in 1940, reportedly a victim of increased ease of automobile traffic through the newly constructed Sumner Tunnel underneath Boston Harbor.

henry6 wrote:The DL&W also had plans to wire to Scranton but the stockmarket crash, the following depression, the hope of the diesel locomotive, and the falling anthracite market put those plans on hold. Likewise the PRR ditched thier idea to wire over the mountains from Harrisburg to Altoona and maybe even around the big curve to Pittsburg for a lot of the same reasons.
I don't believe the NYC was into juice as much. Smoke abatement in Cleveland necessitated it there and was the reason for Harmon and White Plains to GCT being third railed. The hill west out of Albany was looked at but otherwise,the Water Level Route was in no real need of electirfication. The NY,NH and H needed it to get into NYC, so it was a natural extension on heavily travelled routes like Canaan and Danbury as well as the mainline to New Haven. There the wire runs out where the money ran out. I wonder, though, if the B&M, GN, and MLW would have electrified where they did if they did not have the tunnels?

The Reading also envisioned electrifying its mainline to Reading and beyond into the coal fields as well as the New York Branch to Manville/Bound Brook and then (via an electrified CNJ) to Jersey City.

N&W's Elkhorn Tunnel electrification, Bluefield to Ieagar, W. V, touched on in Mr. Boylan's post, was unique in that it reverted from electric to steam power when the wires came down in 1950.

And we can add Long Island, which began electrification of some subrban lines aroud the time of the opening of Pennsylvania Station; also unique in that its electrified territory has continued to expand into the present era.

lstone19 wrote:

CarterB wrote:I guess it will always be a difference of opinion about the Insull Lines in/around Chicago as to whether they were interurbans or commuter rail lines. CSS&SB seems to have been considered a 'main line' railroad rather than interurban, whereas CNS&M and CA&E interurbans, yet IC electric were called 'commuter'.

I thought the South Shore was originally considered an interurban. But it made it downtown via a steam road blurring the definition. And further blurring the definition, the IC Electric was almost completely separated from the "steam" tracks and operated exclusively with MU cars. So a case could be made that the IC electric was an interurban subsidiary of the IC (keep in mind that there are plenty of example, particularly today, of transit lines running parallel to "steam" railroads.

The distinctions between "mainline", "interurban", and "transit" are meaningless-to-nonexistent in a historical context, especially in Chicago. The CTA's South Side and Lake Street branches (now the Green Line) started out with steam operations and in the case of the South Side even had freight branches!