Interurban & Suburban Railway Information
The electric interurban railway was a short-lived and mostly forgotten system of mass transit that sprung into existence in the last decade of the 19th century. After explosive growth in the 1890s and 1900s, the industry was almost completely decimated by 1930. Its relative obscurity is not due to its lack of importance or extent, for there were thousands of miles of tracks in many states, but because of the industry's complete and swift collapse.
Shortly after the invention of reliable traction motors and the subsequent electrification of local street railway systems, entrepreneurial individuals began applying the technology to longer haul routes to serve territory that was lacking meaningful transportation. It must be reiterated that in the late 19th and early 20th century, paved roads of any sort were limited to cities and a few wealthy suburbs. The best hope for rural transportation in the absence of steam railroads was a gravel road, though in the vast majority of cases they were just dirt. In summer the roads would be rutted and dusty, and in the winter and spring they could be impassible due to mud or washouts. Folks living in towns with a railroad station could get around to some degree, but fares were high and the schedule was very infrequent. Many small towns that built spurs off of mainline railroads found themselves stuck with once daily trains that made anything but long distance travel hugely impractical. Some of the narrow gauge railroads built in the 1870s helped a little bit, but schedules were still relatively infrequent.
The interurban changed everything. The small electrically powered cars could accelerate much more quickly than long lumbering steam trains, and they could tackle steep grades and tight turns, so they could make many more frequent stops and still maintain a reasonable schedule (reasonable at the time being around 25 mph). This flexibility allowed farmers living along the tracks, or merchants in small towns the ability to get on or off just about anywhere, rather than at stations spaced several miles apart. Also, most interurbans scheduled cars every hour, with a few extra runs during busy periods. This much improved frequency, with many more stops, decent speed, and somewhat lower fares than mainline railroads (about 1/2 to 2/3 the cost for the same distance) allowed many more people to travel who couldn't before. It was finally possible to a farmer's wife or the small town family to take a trip into the big city for shopping, a baseball game, or an evening at the theater without having to spend the night in a hotel. Merchants and salesmen could travel between many more towns than before, and deliveries of express freight and milk could be made in a few hours rather than overnight. Express service at freight rates was a common advertising slogan throughout the industry.
In many ways the interurban was a network that filled the gap in service and territory between that of the large steam railroads and the local street railway. While they operated similar equipment to streetcars, they were generally longer and heavier, though they were still restricted to certain clearances necessary to operate on local street railway tracks. They were products of the investment and speculation of both the railroad and streetcar industries, but they tended to be rather poorly funded affairs. Thus, most could not afford to secure their own entrance into the downtown of many cities, requiring trackage rights over the local street railway. Once out in the country however, they generally operated either at the side of the road or on their own private right-of-way, which was often happily donated by the adjacent farmers for the promise of better transportation and improved land value. Some short line, narrow gauge, and commuter railroads from the 1870s were absorbed into larger interurban networks or upgraded to electric operation around the turn of the 20th century. Others became mainline or branch steam railroads, but those short lines that didn't manage to upgrade simply faded away, unable to compete with electric traction or later automobiles.
The interurban's primary focus was on passenger service and intercity operation. There were a number of suburban streetcar lines that took on interurban-like characteristics, but they generally still used the slower streetcars, were focused on shorter-haul suburban service, and didn't carry any freight. While freight was not the primary concern of the interurbans, it was still important. A few interurbans that developed their freight business aggressively managed to survive as dieselized branch lines to bigger railroads. The ones that had virtually no freight operations were some of the most vulnerable and earliest to abandon. Most got about a third of their revenue from hauling less-than-carload (LCL) freight, express, mail, and especially milk in the baggage compartments of their combined cars. It was not unusual for an interurban to have some freight trailers, but the combined freight and passenger cars were the most common, with some self-contained electric freight cars called box motors.
Infrastructure was fairly ordinary. Most interurbans were built with a single track with passing sidings at regular intervals. Collisions were avoided by strict adherence to written timetables, as well as regular telephone communication with the dispatching office. Manual block signals were most common, being thrown by the motorman as he passed by. This worked fairly well, but head-on collisions still happened from time to time. Some interurbans built their track to steam railroad standards, and others (particularly in New England) were little more than rural trolley lines, with very slow speeds, tight turns, and heavy grades. In the midwest they tended to fall somewhere in between. Most of the Cincinnati area interurbans had to contend with some fairly steep grades, but since that was less of an impediment with electric propulsion, most didn't bother too much with excessive grading or the easing of tight turns. The real problem was choosing which track gauge to use. Standard gauge allowed easy interchange with steam railroads, but in places like Cincinnati with broad gauge streetcar tracks, it meant there was no way to reach downtown via the street railway system. Choosing the street railway gauge thus made freight interchange extremely difficult, if not impossible. Both options usually ended up being somewhat moot anyway. Steam railroads (especially in the eastern part of the country where there was already a highly developed network) were regularly hostile to the interurbans, and in many cases were only compelled to interchange freight cars after lengthy legal battles. Street railway companies could also be very troublesome as well, charging exorbitant rental fees for access to their tracks and power systems. The only reprieve was for interurban companies fortunate enough to be owned by the same syndicate or individuals as the street railway. In many cases the interurbans had to manage on their own, which weakened their abilities significantly.
The typical electrical system was 600 volts DC, the same as most local street railways. This ensured compatibility, and also was the most highly developed and reliable. Because of the limits of DC transmission, substations were required every 5-10 miles to feed the running wire, with high voltage AC transmission lines connecting the substations to the central power plant. Each company usually built their own power facilities, and many also started supplying general use electricity to the towns along their route. As the systems became outmoded, they generally shut down their generating facilities and bought the power wholesale from growing utility companies. Eventually, the transmission lines and franchise agreements with local towns made them inviting targets for acquisition by those same utility interests.
Despite the sale of electricity and various levels of freight handling, passenger service was most important to the interurbans as already touched on before. Many of them, including several of the ones here in Cincinnati, paralleled steam railroad lines and siphoned off a large amount of their local traffic. This was the least profitable service for those steam railroads, but the interurbans did just fine with it at first. Some routes went through areas that were completely unserved by steam railroads, so in many of those towns along the way their construction was heralded with day-long festivities. Nevertheless, the sort of infrequent travel that characterized the interurbans was also the most vulnerable to competition from paved highways, automobiles, and trucks. As highways were improved throughout the late 1910s and 1920s, the interurbans saw their passenger revenues start to drop. While some survived into the 1930s, others didn't even make it to 1920. The ones that had little freight business to fall back on, or that served very sparsely settled areas were the first to go. Since the industry was never particularly profitable to begin with, it didn't take much of a drop in passenger traffic to send a company into receivership. Many never paid dividends on their stock and were saddled with debt throughout their whole existence.
With the growth of car travel, there was increasing pressure in the 1920s and 30s to get the rails off the roads. Towns began to see the tracks in their streets as a nuisance, especially as the traction companies began deferring maintenance of the road around their rails. Out in the country, state and county governments tried to close down some of the interurbans so they could use their right-of-way to widen the adjacent roads. There was also growing investment in electric utilities, and many interurbans were bought out by syndicates and investors whose primary interest was in the electrical infrastructure, not the railroad.
After the Great Depression had taken its toll, virtually nothing remained of the industry. Only a few lines around Chicago and the extensive Pacific Electric in Los Angeles, both more like heavy rapid transit lines, among a few others scattered around the country remained. By the middle of the 1960s even that was gone, and today only the Chicago, South Shore & South Bend remains. That system has been mostly upgraded to heavy rapid transit and electrified freight service, with some of its early interurban character remaining between Michigan City and South Bend. Here in Cincinnati and pretty much everywhere else, all that remains of the once extensive interurban railway system are earthworks, the occasional bridge abutment, and power lines along the overgrown rights-of-way. Today it's difficult to imagine taking an electric traction car from a place like Georgetown, Hillsboro, Blanchester, Lebanon, Hamilton, Harrison, or Aurora, Indiana to downtown Cincinnati, but for at least a short period of time in history many people did. Modern light rail systems are similar in some ways, but they tend to be much more heavily built, and are really more suburban commuter oriented than the interurbans of 100 years ago. Even so, should Cincinnati ever build light rail, it would not be something new and foreign to southwest Ohio, and in fact, if you know where to look, it's pretty easy to see evidence of this once extensive network of clean and reliable public transit.
Anderson Ferry - Aurora, IN, branch to Harrison
1900-1930
Standard Gauge
Constructed by the Cincinnati Lawrenceburg & Aurora Electric Street Railroad, 1900
Purchased by Cincinnati Street Railway, service cut back to Fernbank, line from Anderson Ferry to Fernbank converted to broad gauge, 1930
Streetcar service suspended, 1940
This interurban was a standard-gauge line along the Ohio River from Anderson's Ferry, at the west end of Cincinnati, to Aurora, Indiana (25 miles), with a branch from Valley Junction to Harrison, Ohio (8 miles). It was completed in 1900. Plans for extension west to Rising Sun, Madison, and Louisville were never implemented. In 1913 flood damage forced the road into receivership, from which it did not emerge for 15 years, one of the longest receivership periods in the industry's history. The line is principally noteworthy for its pioneer purchase of lightweight, one-man equipment in 1918. The company was severely handicapped by its remote terminal, but like the rest of Cincinnati's standard-gauge interurbans, it never achieved entry into the center of the city. After reorganizing as the Cincinnati Lawrenceburg and Aurora Electric Railway Company in 1928, the line survived for only two years, and was abandoned in 1930 after a year of operating losses. Six miles from Anderson's Ferry to Fernbank were converted to 5'-2 1/2" gauge and operated by the Cincinnati Street Railway until 1940. The lightweight cars were sold to the Sand Springs Railway at Tulsa, Oklahoma. (From: Hilton, George W. and John F. Due, The Electric Interurban Railways in America. Stanford University Press, 1960)
The CL&A, while a pioneer in some ways was a pretty typical interurban in its early life. It greatly improved access to the city for Cincinnati's most remote neighborhoods, Delhi, Sayler Park, and Fernbank. They grew up as railroad commuter suburbs in the late 19th century in proximity to bustling industry along the Ohio River and both the Big Four and B&O railroads. When the CL&A opened it added yet another set of tracks through this narrow linear corridor hemmed in by the river and steep hillsides. Ridership on the CL&A was average for the Cincinnati area, with 1.5 million passengers in 1912, though because the C&LE and Cincinnati & Hamilton both had very strong stats (over 4.3 million passengers each) the CL&A actually had the third highest ridership in the Cincinnati area. Construction was typical, with a double track line from Anderson Ferry west to the edge of Fernbank, where it became single track. The terminal area at Anderson Ferry is quite far removed from downtown Cincinnati, so a long streetcar ride was necessary to make connections to any meaningful destination.
The year 1918 is one that comes up regularly throughout reports of the interurban industry as being a particularly difficult one where many lines entered receivership or began talks of abandonment. There were really only two choices that the tractions line had, either abandon or try to modernize. The CL&A chose to modernize through the purchase of new lightweight cars. It was such a rousing success that other roads in Cincinnati and around the country began similar programs to upgrade their equipment. The CL&A had a bit more freight business than other area interurbans due to the type of development that stretches westward along the Ohio River. This is likely why it was one of the earliest developers of container shipping. These containers could be brought by truck to the terminal at Anderson Ferry and loaded on rail cars for shipment to Indiana or vice versa. A few other local railroads dabbled in this type of shipment, but with motor trucks taking over all less than carload (LCL) freight, this method of shipment was largely forgotten until the recent resurgence of boat/rail/truck shipping and the distinctive metal cargo containers we have today.
Ultimately the CL&A was purchased by Lawrence Van Ness, who was only interested in the electrical infrastructure and franchises. The eventual closing of the road and takeover by the Cincinnati Street Railway in 1930 is simlar to what happened with the Cincinnati, Milford & Blanchester on the east side of town. The street railway was able to purchase the infrastructure at scrap value and convert it to streetcar use. This wasn't the most simple operation because the track gauge had to be converted from standard to broad. They left one rail and simply moved the other one over. The line was cut back to a new loop near Lowland Road where it originally went to single track.
The CL&A terminal at Anderson Ferry met a large streetcar loop with an extra layover track next to the CL&A depot. The odd frontage street to the north is where the streetcar line ran before turning south at Anderson Ferry Road to start looping around. The CL&A terminal was actually east of Anderson Ferry Road. The double-track route within the Cincinnati city limits basically followed the south side of River Road west from here to Delhi, where it merged with Graceley Road to pass through the neighborhoods of Sayler Park and Fernbank. Just past Lowland Road at the northwest extreme of Fernbank, the double-track route merged to a single track. The interurban line then ran on its own right-of-way for a short distance before coming onto Main Street in Addyston. There's some telephone poles at the extreme northwest end of Fernbank, but the graded right-of-way behind some houses on Hillside Avenue is the most visible remain of the CL&A. There's also some bridge remains about where E. Main turns into Hillside. This is where you'd get off of River Road to get on E. Main or Hillside. The CL&A continued to follow Route 50 after Addyston. Before US-50 was widened and bypassed North Bend to the west, the road turned directly onto Miami Avenue. The CL&A however continued past Miami and shared the cut through the hillside with the Big Four Railroad past Harrison's Tomb. It turned back to Miami via Mt. Nebo and proceeded north through Cleves to Cooper. It then came back onto US-50 and crossed the Great Miami River, sharing an old highway bridge. The route to Aurora followed US-50 into Indiana and Lawrenceburg. The branch line to Harrison basically paralleled the old NYC now I&O line along Kilby Road through Whitewater Township. As I have not been able to find any detailed USGS maps of southeast Indiana from the CL&A operating period, I have no way of plotting the route past the state line with much certainty. What I've mapped in Indiana so far should be taken with a grain of salt, but its correct in its general layout.
Cincinnati & Westwood Railroad
South Fairmount - Westwood
1874-1941
Narrow gauge, steam line constructed by the Cincinnati & Westwood Railroad, 1874
Converted to Standard Gauge, 1891
All service suspended 1924, abandoned and dismantled 1941
The Cincinnati & Westwood was a short, narrow gauge suburban railroad that provided transportation to the incorporated village of Westwood before it was annexed to the City of Cincinnati. Of the narrow gauge railroads in the area, this is the only one that was never upgraded to an interurban, like the College Hill Railroad was absorbed into the C&LE, or the Cincinnati, Georgetown and Portsmouth that electrified its existing line and added some new branches. Nor did it ever have any ambitions for becoming part of a larger narrow gauge or standard gauge system, like the CL&N or the C&E (later N&W line to Portsmouth). Plans for an interurban from Indiana to connect to cincinnati via the C&W never materialized. It basically lived out its life as a short line suburban railroad on the same route it had from its inception. Like the College Hill Railroad and the Mt. Lookout dummy line, it was constructed primarily to get people to buy suburban houses in the neighborhood it served, not as a heavy freight hauler. The railroad was never expected to make much money, if any, but to improve the value of the land speculators wanted to sell. The C&W's original proprietor was William Davis, with Michael Werk and James N. Gamble among the stock subscribers. Davis died in 1877, less than a year after operations started. Michael Werk took over and basically underwrote the road's mounting losses with his own money. He ran the railroad until 1886, by which time it had fallen into disrepair and was closed by the Ohio Railroad Commission due to safety concerns.
After nearly a year out of service, James N. Gamble took over and upgraded the line to standard gauge while rebuilding much of the roadbed and trestles. Despite these improvements, passenger service was suspended shortly after the Westwood streetcar line opened in 1895. The cost of tickets could not compete with the 5 cent city fare on the streetcar, and running time was probably not much better with complicated switching arrangements with the connecting CH&D. The CH&D terminal at 5th and Baymiller was also not particularly convenient for commuters who might need to transfer to streetcars or a taxi to get to their final destination anyway.
Upon losing the passenger traffic that was the line's main reason for existence, Gamble had to contribute a lot of his money to fund the railroad's deficits, just as Werk had done earlier. The C&W limped along by hauling freight to the coal yards and supply depots along the way. Normal operations ceased in 1924, but the C&W managed to hang on until 1941 with one employee running a gasoline powered motor car along the line daily to maintain the bridges and tracks. After that though, the tracks were pulled up for scrap, and any of the trestles that weren't dismantled for safety reasons (all of them were made of wood) were left to rot. So even though the C&W didn't last long, it still outlived all the area's interurban railroads, and there's more remnants than one might expect.
Surprisingly, even though this line has been gone for nearly 60 years, there's still some tracks shown in GIS data from the 1990's. I've managed to trace the route pretty accurately, but suburban development has erased much of what may have remained at the end of the line. This railroad had its own right-of-way for its entire length. It started in South Fairmount and joined with the CH&D east of Beekman Street and the Lunkenheimer Valve plant. A short spur off the CH&D still remains under the pavement to the abandoned factory. Right now, only the tracks crossing Beekman remain, and they will likely be covered as soon as the road is paved again. Running west from here, the line ran between Queen City and Harrison Avenues and roughly paralleled Queen City Avenue. There's some bridge abutments left at White Street, which the Cincinnati & Westwood had a wooden trestle over. At East Tower Drive/Gehrum Lane, the line turned northwest towards Harrison Avenue. Before hitting Montana Avenue, it turned west and ran to roughly the western border of the city where it ended. There is a noticeable raised berm throughout much of Westwood, which makes the right-of-way easy to trace. It is difficult to locate the end of the line, however, due to more recent development, at-grade track, and the proximity of the Cincinnati and Cheviot borders, which means some streets stop at the border, making it look like a potential rail route where it isn't.
Spring Grove - Detroit, MI
1873-1939
Narrow gauge, steam line constructed by the College Hill Railroad from Spring Grove to College Hill and Mt. Healthy, 1873
Reorganized as the Cincinnati Northwestern Railway, 1883
Converted to Standard Gauge, 1887
Purchased by the Southern Ohio Traction Company with connecting lines to Dayton and electrified, 1901
Reorganized as the Cincinnati, Dayton & Toledo Traction Co., merging the Cincinnati Northwestern out of existence, 1902
Merged into the Ohio Electric Railway, 1907
Removed from the Ohio Electric between Cincinnati and Dayton and reorganized as the Cincinnati & Dayton Traction Co., 1918
Reorganized as the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railway, 1926
Reorganized and expanded via the Ohio Electric's former main line as the Cincinnati & Lake Erie Railroad, 1930
Abandoned, 1939
The Ohio Electric Railway, the largest interurban in Ohio, was organized by Randal Morgan, W. Kesley Schoepf, Hugh J. McGowan, and their associates on May 16, 1907. The company had originated two years earlier, when the same men formed the Ohio Syndicate, and organized the Cincinnati Northern Traction Company to lease the Cincinnati Dayton and Toledo Traction Company, proprietor of the important road between Cincinnati and Dayton. The line had been built by two companies, both affiliated with the Pomeroy-Mandelbaum syndicate, the Cincinnati and Miami Valley Traction Company (Hamilton-Dayton, 36 miles, opened 1897), and the Cincinnati and Hamilton Electric Street Railway (College Hill-Hamilton, 14 miles, opened 1898). The Pomeroy-Mandelbaum interests consolidated the two companies into the Southern Ohio Traction Company in 1900. The new company was in turn consolidated with the Miamisburg and Germantown Traction Company (5 miles, completed 1901), and two street railway properties into the Cincinnati Dayton and Toledo Traction Company in 1902. The Pomeroy-Mandelbaum interests were financially distressed by the panic of 1903, and so lost control of the property to the Schoepf-McGowan syndicate.
The Ohio Electric assumed the lease of the CD&T, and leased the Indiana Columbus and Eastern Traction Company that the Schoepf-McGowan syndicate had organized out of the former Appleyard properties in 1906. It also leased the Lima and Toledo Traction Company (73 miles when completed), which, although unfinished, had itself leased the Fort Wayne Van Wert and Lima Traction Company in 1906. When the gap between Lima and Bellefontaine was closed and the line from Lima to Toledo was completed (both in 1908), and when the Defiance branch was electrified in 1909, the Ohio Electric consisted of about 617 miles of line. It operated city service in Lima, Dayton, Hamilton, Newark, and Zanesville.
Size did not mean strength, however, for the Ohio Electric never paid a dividend, and was never free of financial problems. It suffered from the two-cent-fare laws after 1906, and suffered about $1.5 million damage in the 1913 flood. Increasing costs, especially for paving and for street maintenance, relatively rigid fare structures, and rising highway competition all contributed to the company's disintegration. In 1918 it surrendered the Dayton-Cincinnati line to new owners, the Cincinnati and Dayton Traction Company, and in 1920 it turned the Dayton and Western back to its owners. In January 1921, the company went bankrupt, and was dissolved. The IC&E, the Columbus Newark and Zanesville, the Lima and Toledo, and the Fort Wayne Van Wert and Lima all went bankrupt at the same time, but resumed independent operation.
The CN&Z and the FWVW&L were reorganized independently in 1925 and 1926, respectively, and never again operated jointly with the IC&E and the L&T. The L&T was reorganized in 1924 as the Lima-Toledo Railroad. In 1929, both the Lima-Toledo and the IC&E were reunited with the Cincinnati-Dayton line as the Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad.
As the first event in the disintegration of the Ohio Electric Railway the line between Dayton and Cincinnati was transferred to an independent company, the Cincinnati and Dayton Traction Company, organized on April 26, 1918. This company itself failed and was reorganized into the Cincinnati Hamilton and Dayton Railway Company in 1926. The new company, which had no connection with the railroad of the same name, was headed by a former professor of finance, Dr. Thomas Conway, Jr., who had already been successful in reviving the Chicago Aurora and Elgin Railroad. He ordered new equipment that the property badly needed, and increased the maintenance of its roadbed. he did well at building up freight service in interurban equipment, and by virtue of his wide contacts in the railroad industry was more than ordinarily successful in establishing through rates for LCL with the railroads. Conway believed that there was still a place for the interurban in the medium distance range of passenger traffic, and thus conceived of regrouping the main lines of the former Ohio Electric.
In 1929 Conway brought together (effective January 1, 1930) under the ownership of his company, the Indiana Columbus and Eastern and the Lima-Toledo Railroad. The CH&D changed its name simultaneously to the Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad. The new company consisted of the old Ohio Electric main line from College Hill (Cincinnati) to Toledo (216 miles) and a single branch from Springfield to Columbus (44.5 miles). Since both were relatively strong lines, by the standards of the industry, they were considered good prospects for survival. Between 1931 and 1936, the C&LE operated the Dayton and Western, also a relatively important line. Conway ordered 20 new cars capable of high speeds and offering considerable comfort, and inaugurated limited service between Cincinnati, Columbus, Toledo, and Detroit. It was too late, however, for such efforts to be successful. In 1932, the company was put in receivership under Conway, and a retrenchment of its operations began. Abandonment of the Eastern Michigan Toledo Railroad in 1932 ended through service to Detroit. The C&LE's Springfield-Toledo line was abandoned on November 19, 1937, and the rest of the interurban lines were discontinued by May 31, 1939. the company's bus subsidiary took over passenger service along the same routes. Rail service from Dayton to Southern Hills (3 miles), mainly on Dayton city streets, was not replaced by buses until September 28, 1941.
Conway's endeavor to make a success of the C&LE was the most concentrated effort at survival of any of the Ohio interurban lines, and in most respects paralleled the experience of the Insull interests with the Indiana Railroad. (From: Hilton, George W. and John F. Due, The Electric Interurban Railways in America. Stanford University Press, 1960)
The C&LE was Cincinnati's longest-lived and one of the busiest interurbans. Like the Cincinnati & Hamilton Traction Company, it served the densely populated valleys between Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Dayton. These two lines together carried more passengers than the rest of Cincinnati's interurbans combined, with each carrying 4.3 to 4.4 million passengers in 1912. Part of the reason this railroad lasted longer than the others is that it served hilltop areas of Cincinnati with no other rail transportation, and it actually made it to other major cities like Dayton, Toledo and Detroit. Most interurbans ended in piddly country towns, and required transfers to other lines to get to the nearest major city. North College Hill, Mt. Healthy and points north had no other form of rail transportation, while the other interurbans usually had competition from steam railroads, streetcars, or other interurbans. While the Cincinnati & Hamilton and other steam railroads also served these industrial cities to the north, they all took much different routes, so were able to draw on differing tributary areas while still connecting major industrial and farming communities. The C&LE was also quite fast in its later years, and it even won a race with a single-engine airplane in the 1930s. Of course, that was a publicity stunt orchestrated by the railroad.
The history of the CL&E in Cincinnati is rather sorted due to all the mergers and complicated dealings of the multitude of parent and sibling railroads. Locally, it started with the College Hill Railroad Company, which was incorporated on May 22, 1873 to build a three foot narrow gauge railroad from Spring Grove Avenue at present day Crawford Avenue north through College Hill and Mt. Healthy to Ross (at the time known as Venice) on the Great Miami River. Construction started in 1875 and operations began on the first three miles of track on March 11, 1876 to the intersection of Hamilton and Llanfair Avenues in College Hill. Only four trains ran per day, pulled by underpowered dummy cars. Construction was very lax, as few cuts or fills were dug, so many wooden trestles and bridges were needed on the long climb up the hill. Extension further north was started in the spring of 1877 and completed to Compton Road in Mt. Healthy on October 13 of that year. The western route which bypassed the center of town was chosen by Grant Burrows who was hoping to develop his hundred acre land holdings to the west of Mt. Healthy. This sort of routing and the lax construction of the railroad illustrates how such projects like this and the similar Cincinnati & Westwood were intended more to improve land value for real estate speculators than to be any sort of lasting transportation.
After a number of years limping along, the College Hill Railroad went into receivership in 1883 after defaulting on its mortgage bond payments. The company was reorganized as the Cincinnati Northwestern Railway on December 18, 1883 with plans for extension to Indiana and conversion to standard gauge track. A third rail was laid in 1886, though narrow gauge equipment still ran until 1887. No extensions were ever made north of Compton Road, nor were any plans to connect with the CL&N's Spring Grove, Avondale & Cincinnati branch which ended at the Cincinnati Zoo realized either. Other plans to use the towpath of the Miami & Erie Canal as a route to downtown were squashed by nearby railroads and the street railway's owners who had the political connections to stop such an endeavor. Construction of the College Hill streetcar line on Hamilton Avenue in 1895 killed the passenger business as they could not compete with the five cent city fare, even though the trip was faster on the railroad. Passenger operations were suspended in 1899 while limited freight service continued.
In the 1890s a handful of electric interurbans were built south from Dayton in the Great Miami Valley towards Cincinnati. These include the Hamilton & Lindenwald, a mostly suburban service extended from Hamilton's street railway, opened in 1890; the Dayton Traction from Dayton to Miamisburg, opened in 1896; the Cincinnati & Miami Valley Traction Company from Hamilton to Miamisburg, opened in 1897, establishing through cars between Hamilton and Dayton in 1898; and the Cincinnati & Hamilton Electric Street Railway from Hamilton to College Hill, opened in 1898. The Cincinnati & Hamilton (not to be confused with the nearby Cincinnati & Hamilton Traction Company that ran on Springfield Pike) which blocked from extending its route south of North Bend Road by the street railway company that did not want an interurban interfering with their College Hill line. So for a few years people traveling north of College Hill would need to take the streetcar to North Bend Road and transfer to the interurban at a covered shelter at that location. In 1901 all those connecting interurbans from Dayton to College Hill were merged into the Southern Ohio Traction Company, which also purchased the Cincinnati Northwestern. They laid a separate track in Hamilton Avenue to connect the route between Llanfair Avenue and North Bend Road to the rest of the system, and they electrified the rest of the route. With connections along Hamilton Avenue now established for through passenger service to Spring Grove Avenue, the original route of the College Hill Railroad west of Hamilton Avenue along Llanfair to Compton was relegated to a freight branch, though it remained in service until 1939 with the rest of the line in the Cincinnati area.
In 1902 the Southern Ohio was reorganized as the Cincinnati, Dayton & Toledo Traction Company and the foundations were being laid for creating the huge Ohio Electric system which was finally incorporated in 1907. The broader history of the Ohio Electric involves a tangle of interconnecting lines throughout all of western Ohio which is much beyond the scope of this write-up. Suffice it to say, while the Ohio Electric was fraught with problems, it still breathed life into the former College Hill Railroad which was on its last legs at the turn of the 20th century. Tracks were upgraded, trestles were replaced with fills, and overall it was put into good working order with electrification along its entire route, including the freight branch. In consolidating and upgrading the physical plant of its various predecessors, the Ohio Electric also implemented one of the few interurban route realignments in southwest Ohio. This realignment established a new private right-of-way between Trenton and Middletown, bypassing the unincorporated neighborhood of Excello and speeding up running times. A new bridge was constructed over the Great Miami River and the shortened route opened in 1912. The bridge was destroyed in the 1913 flood however, and a "temporary" wooden trestle over the river was used until 1939. The original concrete bridge piers remain in the river, barely used. When the Ohio Electric system began to collapse, the Cincinnati to Dayton leg was the first to be spun off into its own company, the Cincinnati & Dayton Traction Company, in 1918. This was a period when the industry as a whole was declining, but there was hope that connection to the planned Cincinnati subway would bring the Cincinnati & Dayton into a new life as a rapid transit feeder.
The plan for the Cincinnati subway was originally intended to give interurbans like the C&LE a way to reach downtown on a standard gauge rails without the delay of operating over the congested city streets. Had the subway been completed, the C&LE is probably the only interurban that would have been able to make use of it, as most others had already folded by the mid 1920s. The Cincinnati Traction Company wanted to operate the subway, which raised a huge stink among the interurbans. They claimed the street railway would use their clout to keep the interurbans from using the tunnels, reserving them only for their own suburban service with broad gauge tracks, rather than standard or a dual gauge setup. Since the subway was never completed anyway, nobody knows how this fight would have been resolved.
After hopes of the subway died in the mid 20s, the new company had to reorganize again in 1926 as the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railway, confusingly named like the much older steam railroad which it crossed and even connected with near Spring Grove Avenue. This reorganization under Dr. Thomas Conway, Jr. and the eventual formation of the Cincinnati & Lake Erie Railroad in 1930 looked like salvation for the company. The new equipment and maintenance to tracks and right-of-way showed the world what a first class interurban operation could be. Not only was passenger service significantly improved with the very fast lightweight aluminum "Red Devil" cars manufactured by the Cincinnati Car Company, but same-day freight service was inaugurated between Cincinnati and Toledo/Cleveland. Such service isn't even available today. Unfortunately, at that point in history few were interested in the C&LE and such "old-fashioned" technology as railroads. When the various connecting lines upstate began closing, it significantly hurt the viability of the main trunk between Cincinnati and Toledo. Ultimately the whole thing was shut down in 1939, ending interurban service in southwest Ohio.
The CL&E's terminal was at Crawford Avenue and Spring Grove Avenue in Cumminsville, now an uninspiring collection of industrial buildings. Due to the standard gauge tracks, the line could not operate over streetcar lines to reach downtown. There was a connection with the CH&D, but for most of the history of the interurban, the line terminated at Spring Grove Avenue, and passengers had to transfer to streetcars to reach downtown. The double track route followed Crawford along the western edge of Spring Grove Cemetery until the road bends, the C&LE then proceeded up to College Hill on its own right-of-way. While there are no major structures or telephone poles left that I know of, the grading is still evident as the rugged hillside up to College Hill hasn't been built on. There is a partially collapsed culvert in Laboiteaux Woods, but it is quite a hike to get there. At Hamilton and Llanfair Avenues, the electric-era main line turned north up Hamilton Avenue. Just beyond North Bend Road, it went to a single-track off the west side of the road but still on the public right-of-way. This is usually represented on old maps as street running, so it's difficult to distinguish. Road reconstruction by the city of Cincinnati in the early 1930s put new tracks in the middle of the widened road. The tracks stayed on or to the side of Hamilton Avenue all the way north into Butler County, except for one short detour at Burlington Road (Hamilton Avenue later bypassed this section). There's nothing to see that I know of along this part of the line through Hamilton County. There was also an important transfer station on the northwest corner of Hamilton Avenue and North Bend Road, where interurban passengers could transfer to the College Hill streetcar line under a protected shelter.
The single track freight line, which was the old main line of the narrow gauge College Hill Railroad, ran on the north side of Llanfair until Belmont Avenue, where it followed its own right-of-way north to Simpson Avenue. There are plenty of telephone poles and grading along this stretch, especially noticeable where the railroad passed under Glenview Avenue. The line Crossed North Bend Road at Witherby Avenue, and some telephone poles can still be seen to the south. Between Witherby and Simpson there is a North and South Railroad Avenue which the C&LE ran between. This is an interesting diagonal slice across this gridded neighborhood. The freight line followed the side of Simpson Avenue north to Arlington Memorial Cemetery where it had its own right-of-way to the terminal and a small yard at Compton Road in Mt. Healthy. The old carbarn at the terminal is now used by Sunderhaus Auto Body, with the original high bay doors still evident on the north side of the building.
Hartwell - Hamilton
1901-1926
Broad Gauge
Constructed by the Cincinnati & Hamilton Traction Co., 1901
Leased to the Cincinnati Interurban Co., 1902
Reorganized as the Ohio Traction Co., 1905
Purchased by Cincinnati Street Railway, Service Cut Back to Springdale, 1926
Streetcar Service Suspended, 1932
The lesser of the two interurbans connecting Cincinnati and Hamilton was this 5'-2 1/2" line through Wyoming and Glendale. It was built by predecessor companies between 1897 and 1901, and brought together by merger as the Cincinnati and Hamilton Traction Company in 1902. This road had great difficulty securing a franchise in Hamilton in 1901, but did so after threatening to run motor vehicles from the city limits to the business district as train connections. In 1902 the property was leased to the Cincinnati Interurban Company, which in 1905 became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Ohio Traction Company, a Schoeph-McGowan corporation that controlled the street railway in Cincinnati. It operated as the Mill Creek Valley Line of the Ohio Traction Company until 1926, when it became part of the Cincinnati Street Railway itself. The Street Railway cut the line back to Glendale in 1926, and discontinued it in 1932. (From: Hilton, George W. and John F. Due, The Electric Interurban Railways in America. Stanford University Press, 1960)
This is the second interurban to connect Cincinnati with Hamilton, although over a much different route. The line was pretty heavily traveled, with 4.4 million passengers in 1912, due to the dense industrial and residential development in the river valleys between Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Dayton. As already mentioned, the city of Hamilton caused some problems for this line, but Springdale depended on, and actively supported the interurban. This was most apparent after the Cincinnati Street Railway took over the line and ended interurban operations on July 15, 1926. Streetcar service was introduced on the line to Glendale, ending at a loop at the corner of Sharon Road and Springfield Pike. The citizens of Springdale wanted to keep transit service, and they funded the construction of a loop in front of the city municipal building (a short distance north of Kemper Road). The loop was put in service on April 12, 1928, and service was restored to downtown Cincinnati from Springdale. All operations north of Wyoming were abandoned in June 1930 however, and by August 11, 1931, a loop was built at Springfield Pike and Bonham Road in Wyoming. All streetcar service on the line was abandoned on November 9, 1932, due to repaving of Springfield Pike south to DeCamp Avenue in Hartwell. There's some more information about this line in a site detailing the history of Glendale, as well as in another page on the history of Springdale.
The route basically stayed on streets in Hamilton County, although there was a small private right-of-way in Hartwell at Woodbine and DeCamp. Because of the broad gauge tracks, and the fact that the Schoeph-McGowan syndicate owned the line, it was able to operate to downtown on the streetcar tracks. The double track route north of Hartwell followed Springfield Pike to Glendale, where it continued north along Princeton Pike, then became single track and turned west on Sharon Road to re-join Springfield Pike. One USGS topographic map, as well as data from the Ohio Department of Transportation (formerly from the Public Utitilies Commission of Ohio), show the line bypassing Glendale, following Springfield Pike the whole way without entering Glendale along Princeton Pike and Sharon Road. This is one of several instances where errors on old USGS maps were copied into newer maps. The routing of the tracks within Glendale are well-documented however, as there was a somewhat complicated wye track for short-turning cars at the intersection of Princeton Pike and Sharon Road before the line was converted to streetcar use and the loop was built at Sharon and Springfield Pike.
Kennedy Heights - Lebanon
1903-1922
Broad Gauge
Constructed by the Interurban Railway & Terminal Co., 1903
Abandoned, 1922
Three 5'-2 1/2" lines out of Cincinnati comprised this company. The first was built along the Ohio River to New Richmond (19 miles) in 1902 by the Cincinnati and Eastern Electric Railway. The second, the Suburban Traction Company, opened a line to Bethel (32 miles) in June 1903, and the third, the Rapid Railway, finished a line northeast to Lebanon (33 miles) in October of the same year. The three companies were consolidated in 1902. This company was also badly damaged by the flood of 1913, and in 1914 went into a receivership from which it was never removed. The Bethel line was particularly weak, since most of it was within sight of the Cincinnati Georgetown and Portsmouth, a somewhat stronger company. The IR&T Bethel line had the advantage of entry into the downtown area over the Cincinnati Street Railway, but this was not enough to save it, and it was abandoned in 1918. The remaining lines to Lebanon and New Richmond were abandoned in 1923. (From: Hilton, George W. and John F. Due, The Electric Interurban Railways in America. Stanford University Press, 1960)
Like the other IR&T lines, this one had a relatively short and uneventful life. It was the strongest of the IR&T routes by quite a large margin, with 1.3 million passengers in 1912, actually beating out the CG&P and only a little less than the CL&A. There had originally been a plan to run a branch line from South Lebanon (where the power plant was located) to Morrow, but this was never built. It ran on Montgomery Avenue, continuing past the end of the streetcar route, originally at Fenwick Avenue in Norwood, but later from Coleridge Avenue in Kennedy Heights. This, and the other IR&T lines traveled over streetcar lines to reach downtown. Past Silverton, the IR&T became single track, and it paralleled the CL&N north through Deer Park along the west side of Blue Ash Road. Most of the route in this area is now used as parking along the street, but large power lines remain. The old carbarn is still standing at 7234 Blue Ash Road, now occupied by Stewart Industries. The line then ran along Kenwood and hooked back up with the CL&N on its own right-of-way to Butler County. There was a short branch line to Montgomery, exactly paralleling a branch line for the CL&N. Overall the Rapid Railway is well represented by power lines, and the route is quite apparent through Mason and Kings Mills. Daniel Bingamon's house in Kings Mills is the old station, and the right-of-way is probably pretty evident going down into the Little Miami Valley behind there, but I have not explored it myself. There's not much to see between there and Lebanon, however there are still tracks buried under the streets of downtown Lebanon. Cracks were telegraphing through the pavement on Mulberry Street as of 2006. This is the only instance of actual interurban era tracks remaining anywhere in the Cincinnati area that I know of.
Norwood - Hillsboro
1906-1920
Standard Gauge
Constructed by the Cincinnati & Columbus Traction Co., 1905-1907
Abandoned east of Owensville, 1919
Abandoned completely, 1920
This was a standard-gauge interurban, 53 miles long, between Norwood, at the edge of Cincinnati, and Hillsboro. It was chartered in 1901 and opened on April 22, 1906. It was promoted locally and early in its history was known as "The Swing Line," after its principal promoter. The company's ambition to build east to Chillicothe or Columbus were never realized. It paralleled no railroad, although the Baltimore & Ohio had a branch into Hillsboro. The company was never profitable enough to pay a dividend. The property was so badly damaged in the flood of 1913 (which injured all the lines in the area) that the company applied for voluntary receivership, from which it never emerged. In common with most interurbans, it had a very bad year in 1918, when it lost $21,036. The receiver concluded the property was hopeless and in 1919 applied for abandonment. Permission was granted, but an unsuccessful effort on the part of local residents to refinance the road and to continue it in service delayed sale for scrap until 1920. Its power business outlasted the rail operation, but was also sold to local interests in 1920. Its cars, heavy Jewett combines, were sold to the THI&E, the Joplin and Pittsburgh, and the Northeast Oklahoma, which was about to electrify. (From: Hilton, George W. and John F. Due, The Electric Interurban Railways in America. Stanford University Press, 1960)
As already mentioned, this interurban never made it any farther than Hillsboro, though it was still one of the longest of the Cincinnati lines (not counting the C&LE which was pieced together from a handful of previously independent roads). Despite its length, this was Cincinnati's shortest-lived and one of the weakest interurbans. Ridership in 1912 was only 608,000 people, higher only than the two very weak IR&T lines to Bethel and New Richmond, which had to compete with CG&P and a mostly undeveloped river floodplain respectively. Negotiations for franchises and procurement of right-of-way began in 1901 by the Swing family, though construction didn't finally start until January 1905. Inspection trips over the road east of Milford were conducted in August and September of that same year, and regular operations between Milford and Hillsboro commenced on October 1, 1905. Bridge worker strikes delayed opening the line west of Milford, and the Norfolk & Western was denying the C&C the right to cross their tracks west of Hillsboro, though tracks to Elm and Main streets were already in place (it's interesting to note that the C&C was also a customer of N&W, who supplied coal to the power house in Perintown). Once the Little Miami River bridge was completed, the whole line was open to regular traffic in April of 1906. A short extension from Main and Elm to a loop around the courthouse in Hillsboro was opened in July 1907, completing the full extent of the route.
During the early negotiations, this interurban fought with the CM&L over the bridge crossing the Little Miami River in Milford. The C&C couldn't get a franchise, and had to build its own bridge to the south. The destruction and replacement of this bridge in a 1907 flood showed how big of a liability it was to the company. They replaced the destroyed span with a second-hand truss from the CH&D. The bridge was washed away again in the1913 flood, and this (among other damage) sent the C&C into receivership. It limped along for a few more years but by 1918 the writing was on the wall. Unlike other nearby interurbans like the CM&L or the CG&P, they made no attempt to reorganize, buy new equipment, or generally upgrade their facilities. There was no prospect for improved ridership, so rather than doubling down they decided to simply give up. Had they decided to modernise, the C&C might have lasted into the mid or possibly late 1920s at best, as that's when other Cincinnati interurbans that did modernize began to fall apart anyway.
There was pressure from the citizens of Madisonville, Madeira, and Ramona (a small community at Drake and Shawnee Run Road in today's Indian Hill) to keep the line, because it was a fast way to get to the factories in Norwood where many residents worked. Since most of the streetcar lines ran radially from downtown, taking the street railway would involve going to Walnut Hills and back out. That would take some 45 minutes, instead of 10 on the C&C. Unfortunately, the Cincinnati Street Railway had no interest in that, and residents were left to fend for themselves. The people of Hillsboro were the most invested in preserving operations, since the N&W and B&O branches to their town provided horribly inadequate service, generally just one shuttle each way to Sardinia or Blanchester per day. Nonetheless, on October 25, 1919 the last car ran on the outer 30 miles of the C&C between Owensville and Hillsboro. Talks of combining the C&C and CM&B and abandoning portions of each never materialized. The line was sold for scrap on January 31, 1920, and wrecking crews began dismantling it in March. The power plant, which provided electricity to Madeira, Perintown, Owensville, Monterey, Marathon, Fayetteville, and the Madisonville lines of the street railway, stayed in service through April when the Union Gas and Electric Company took over the power lines and hooked it up to their system.
Despite the length of the road, the C&C was handicapped by its standard gauge track and remote terminal location in Norwood. It benefited very little from suburban traffic, since it traveled through areas near Cincinnati that are sparsely populated even today. Also, the hilltop soil in Clermont, Brown, and Highland Counties is not well suited to intensive agriculture, so bulk shipments of things like corn or grains was limited, and overall the area of southern and southeast Ohio has been in a general state of decline, or at best stagnation, for over 100 years. Canned fruit and milk shipments were a staple of the C&C's freight hauling, but it paled in comparison to what it could be in a more healthy farming and industrial locale like the Great Miami Valley.
Despite its weaknesses, it was one of the better surveyed and constructed interurbans in the area. Aside from street running in Norwood and Madisonville, it managed to stay on its own right-of-way off to the side of the streets for most of its length. Once past Milford it generally operated to the side of the roads while detouring a block or so away from US-50 at most towns. While grades were somewhat steep within the Cincinnati city limits, it took a fairly curvy route through the various hills and valleys to keep the grades manageable. Utilization of the never completed narrow gauge Cincinnati & Fayetteville right-of-way from Vera Cruz to Fayetteville, as well as a very short stretch through the heart of Milford, kept grades manageable across country as well. Stone culverts in Madeira and Indian Hill were meticulously constructed and some remain completely intact and functional today after more than 100 years.
The route's terminal was at the end of streetcar route 5 in Norwood on Harris Avenue where there was a small wooden station building and a siding for transfering freight to and from the CL&N. Since this was a standard gauge line, passengers had to transfer to streetcars here, or take a steam train to downtown via either the B&O or the CL&N. With the proposed subway running directly behind the old station location, this area would have been one of the busiest intermodal transfer points in the area, with the streetcar line, C&C, subway, and two railroad lines all intersecting nearly on top of each other. Harris Avenue is now right at the edge of the Norwood Lateral highway, and with the subway never being finished, the CL&N dismantled south of the B&O, and no C&C or streetcars left, the area is a bit of an empty wasteland now. East of the station, the single track line went down the center of Harris and quickly struck out on its own right-of-way upon reaching Poplar Street. The crossing of the C&C marked the east end of Norwood Avenue until after it was abandoned, and the road currently narrows noticeably just east of Poplar. The houses on the north side of the street are basically on top of the old roadbed. The road descended into the Duck Creek valley, at the present location of the I-71/Norwood Lateral interchange, just east of the Pennsy's connecting track and Norwood station that was built after the C&C was torn up. All traces of the C&C and Duck Creek Road were obliterated by construction of I-71, and the creek itself has been channelized through much of this area. It is very hard to find anything left of the C&C around here because of this.
Past Ridge Avenue the route ran some 20-30 feet north of Duck Creek Road to just west of today's Oaklawn Drive, a newer road built in the 1960s, where it turned southeast towards Madison Road. Since all the development along Duck Creek, Oaklawn, and the subdivisions around Collinwood Place and Eastwood Drive happened after the C&C was abandoned, the only remaining trace is about 100' of graded right-of-way in a ravine behind the end of Collinwood. The route then followed Madison Road to Whetsel Street, north to Chandler Street, and finally to a private right-of-way west of, and higher up the hill than the B&O outside the city limits. There are many stone culverts and a lot of grading along this stretch of hillside. The route crossed the B&O on a small bridge just west of downtown Madeira. On the east side of Miami Avenue, the original substation remains, having been recently renovated. This was a combined passenger and freight station that also housed the first electrical substation between Cincinnati and Hillsboro. The rails then crossed Camargo and went through Sellman Park where there was once a wooden trestle over a creek. The road went through what would later become cookie-cutter suburban development in Indian Hill to the site of the current village hall, formerly the neighborhood of Ramona. The line ran to the south behind the elementary school then descended into a valley, called Redbird Hollow, and followed this almost all the way to Given Road. The right-of-way through Redbird Hollow is very beautiful, and it's a popular walking trail with several bridge structures to see. The best way to get there is to park on the east side, where there's a small parking "lot" on the side of Given Road. It takes about 40 minutes to walk the entire length of the trail, which almost reaches Shawnee Run Road, but disappears before reaching the school play fields. East of Redbird Hollow, the C&C ran right along the southern border of Indian Hill where there are some bridge abutments visible from Given Road. It then went into Terrace Park and then briefly across Wooster Pike. It then crossed the CM&L on Wooster and another small creek (the same one as in Redbird Hollow, actually) just past the PRR and then crossed the Little Miami River into Milford. There are several piers for this bridge remaining, although they are not accessible from any roads.
Upon reaching High Street in Milford, the C&C runs on the graded right-of-way of the never-completed narow gauge Cincinnati & Fayetteville Railroad which was started in 1877. It was going to connect with the Cincinnati & Eastern (later Norfolk & Western) line in South Milford along Roundbottom Road. The C&C was able to use the graded roadbed around the hill to approximately the intersection of US-50 and OH-28. There's an alley behind some of the houses along Main Street in Milford that marks the route, but after that the commercial development and road widening has obliterated any remains until well past I-275. The carbarns were located south of US-50 near Mohawk Trail but it burned down in 1959. The power plant was not directly on the line, but on the west side of Binning Road in Perintown so coal could be dumped from the adjacent N&W railroad and it could pump water from the East Fork Little Miami River. Beyond Perintown, there are several areas where the route is easily viewed.
Madisonville - Blanchester
1903-1926
Broad Gauge
Constructed by the Cincinnati, Milford & Loveland Traction, Co. to Miford, 1903
Construction completed to Blanchester, 1906
Service over Cincinnati Street Railway lines to downtown suspended, 1915
Reorganized as Cincinnati, Milford & Blanchester Traction Co., 1918
Abandoned between Newtonsville and Blanchester, 1922
Purchased by Cincinnati Street Railway, service cut back to Milford, 1926
Service cut back to Mariemont, 1936
Streetcar service suspended, 1942
A predecessor company, the Cincinnati Milford and Loveland Traction Company opened a 5'-2 1/2" line from Madisonville, on the outskirts of Cincinnati, to Milford (17 miles) in 1903. The road built an additional 12 miles to Blanchester in 1906. The company never operated to Loveland, and never carried out its plans to built to Columbus. Cars were equipped with a double trolley for running on the 8 miles of the Cincinnati Street Railway between Madisonville and a downtown terminal at 5th and Sycamore. The company found its trackage rights too expensive and after 1915 no longer came into the center of the city.
The road was put in receivership in 1917 and in the following year was reorganized as the Cincinnati Milford and Blanchester Traction Company. The Kroger family, which controlled the company, abandoned the segment from Newtonsville to Blanchester in 1922, and sold the rest to interests connected with the Cincinnati Georgetown and Portsmouth Railroad in 1926. The company was hopelessly uneconomic, and was abandoned in the same year, save for the Madisonville-Milford line, which was incorporated into the Cincinnati Street Railway. The CM&B's lightweight cars, very similar to the last cars of the Cincinnati Lawrenceburg and Aurora, were sold to the Street Railway. The surviving Milford line was cut back to Mariemont in 1936 and abandoned entirely in 1942. (From: Hilton, George W. and John F. Due, The Electric Interurban Railways in America. Stanford University Press, 1960)
The Cincinnati, Milford & Blanchester spent most of its life as the inaccurately named Cincinnati, Milford & Loveland, due to its convoluted early history. Several different groups were interested in building from the east side of Cincinnati through Milford into Clermont County. Some planned to connect to the East End streetcar line at Red Bank, and others planned to go through Madisonville or Oakley. Eastern destinations were places like Goshen, Fayetteville, Wilmington, and Washington Court House. The critical hurdles were obtaining franchises to cross Milford's bridge over the Little Miami River and to operate on Wooster Pike, which was still privately owned at the turn of the 20th century. Ultimately some of the syndicates bought out the interests and franchises of the others, while some lost out or gave up. In 1903 the Cincinnati, Milford & Loveland was built by B. H. Kroger between Erie Avenue near Red Bank Road and the west side of Milford after obtaining control of the Cincinnati, Milford & Goshen's franchises which were so far unused. The Little Miami Bridge crossing was still a sore point, as the Cincinnati & Columbus had already received permission to use the bridge and they put down a deposit. The C&C challenged the CM&L's right to use the Goshen line's franchise, but ultimately the CM&L got the rights and the C&C built their own bridge a few hundred feet downstream.
Once the bridge issue was settled, the question then became where to extend the line to. Loveland was obviously their first choice, but a suitable right-of-way on the east side of the Little Miami River could not be obtained due to uncooperative land owners and rough terrain. They then decided to build to Blanchester via Newtonsville, utilizing the graded right-of-way of the never completed narrow gauge Cincinnati & Fayetteville Railroad between Mulberry and Newtonsville. Later plans to extend the line to Wilmington and Washington Court House for connections to Columbus never materialized. Ridership was not particularly strong on this road, as it suffered many of the same problems as the nearby C&C, namely a lack of large towns along the way aside from Milford, and traversing the poor farmlands of Clermont County. 1912 ridership was 811,000, not much better than the C&C.
Even though the CM&L got the Little Miami bridge franchise, fights with Milford were constant. Most of the complaints from Milford came from failure to comply with the franchise agreements, such as: painting poles, providing clean, well heated cars, maintaining the bridge, and keeping roads repaired around the tracks. Heavy damage to the county and state owned bridge in the 1913 flood was not as harmful to the CM&L as the destruction of the C&C's own bridge. Nevertheless, there was still damage to the property to fix, which cut into profits. Exorbitant rental fees charged by the Cincinnati Traction Company for use of the tracks to downtown became a burden as well. Downtown service was suspended in 1915, but this only hurt ridership further, and inflation caused by World War I helped send the line into receivership.
Reorganization came in 1918 with a renaming to the Cincinnati, Milford & Blanchester, the name it should have had from the beginning. At that time new lightweight cars were purchased from the Cincinnati Car Company after observing their success on the Cincinnati, Lawrenceburg & Aurora. These lightweight cars, less than half the weight of their old ones and designed for one-man operation, cut operating expenses significantly. The company's power station on Wooster Pike and the west bank of the Little Miami River was retired and electricity was bought from Union Gas & Electric. These moves significantly cut the road's operating expenses and allowed it to survive a few years more. A westward extension into Oakley via Brotherton Road to connect with the rapid transit loop never happened as rapid transit construction ceased when the CM&B itself was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Ridership on the outer end of the line was sparse and declining, so the Newtonsville to Blanchester stretch was abandoned in 1922. In 1925 the CM&B was sold to Lawrence Van Ness, who was only interested in the power business. Shortly after the sale was completed, the CM&B was abandoned and sold off in 1926, with the electric service going to a new company that was ultimately sold to Union Gas & Electric. Van Ness closed down the CL&A and the CG&P as well as other midwest interurbans in a similar manner.
The Cincinnati Street Railway saw an opportunity to obtain the relatively well maintained track and electrical system for scrap value. This allowed them to bring streetcar service to the southern part of Madisonville, Terrace Park, Milford, as well as the newly developing communities of Fairfax and Mariemont without even having to change the track gauge. The end of the line was at the intersection of OH-28 and US-50 near Milford's high school, and everything east of there was pulled up for scrap. The lightweight cars were still in good shape and they were reconditioned by the street railway company and operated out of the Hyde Park carbarn at Erie and Tarpis. The long run out to Milford became unprofitable however, as it was simply too time consuming, requiring an hour and 20 minutes from Fountain Square. The area between Plainville and Terrace Park is sparsely settled and prone to frequent flooding as well, so it just required too much maintenance for not enough patronage. In 1936 the streetcar line was cut back to a new loop at Miami Avenue in Mariemont while much of the right-of-way was obliterated in order to widen and straighten Wooster Pike. The improvements to Wooster Pike combined with the opening of most of Columbia Parkway in 1938 doomed not only what was left of the CM&B, but it also gutted the ridership of many of the east side streetcar lines that could no longer compete with the fast travel time on the highway. The remainder of streetcar service to Mariemont was terminated in 1942 as the new overpasses being built for Erie Avenue to cross the PRR Richmond Division and Red Bank Road cut off the tracks. The project also saw conversion of the Erie Avenue streetcar line to trolleybuses, which eliminated any possible connection from the former CM&B to the rest of the city.
The CM&B was typical of lightly built midwest interurbans in some ways, with heavy grades, tight turns, and an overall lightweight construction. It did however benefit from having its own right-of-way for most of its route, and the company kept up maintenance of the roadbed pretty well throughout its entire history. It was single track for most of its length, though it was originally double track from Erie Avenue east to near Terrace Park. That was chopped up over time until most of the double track was eliminated by the time the street railway closed down what was left. There was street running in parts of Terrace Park, Milford, and Mulberry, but between Mulberry and Newtonsville it ran across country on the Cincinnati & Fayetteville roadbed. After turning northeast at Newtonsville it ran a good distance to the side of the road until a few blocks from the end of the line in Blanchester. Because of this lack of street running, it has some of the most visible remains of any of Cincinnati's interurbans.
Nothing remains of the terminal at the side of Erie Avenue, however. Constructing the fill for the overpasses required demolition of the carbarn, which was only used for storage after 1926. From here to the east side of Mariemont, the single track right-of-way is very obvious. In Fairfax, it ran just north of Murray Road with two electric sub-transmission lines following it. In Mariemont it ran down the median of Murray Avenue. Utility poles are also quite evident here too. There was a loop at Miami Road for streetcar route 72 to turn back to Cincinnati, and the grading and even part of the platform are still there. Recently, some of the loop was landscaped and a new plaque was installed to commemorate the history of the loop.
Just past Mariemont, a little north of Wooster Pike, there are several concrete bridge supports where the railroad came down the hill into Plainville. From Plainville to Terrace Park, the specific route gets much harder to find. It flirted with Wooster Pike at various places, but widening and realignment of the road has since obliterated any evidence of the side of the road right-of-way. Just east of the Avoca Park trailhead, one of the two transmission lines splits off and goes south towards Newtown. This is where the electrical connection to the Union Gas & Electric system was made when the reorganized CM&B started buying power from them. There was a small substation at that point, but it was removed when the line was abandoned and Wooster Pike widened.
Between Avoca and Terrace Park the one remaining electric transmission line crosses the bike trail and former Little Miami Railroad where the CM&L had a small underpass that regularly flooded. It was filled in after abandonment of the Mariemont to Milford streetcar line in 1936 and nothing remains other than the power line crossing. In Terrace Park the CM&B took a detour from Wooster Pike and followed the north/west side of Elm Avenue through the heart of the village. It then ran on Terrace Avenue and proceeded back to Wooster Pike near the large railroad overpass. There was once a picturesque trestle near the overpass, but virtually nothing of it remains. There are some telephone poles left around here, but it's so overgrown there's not much else to see. There are some remains of a bridge for the C&C here as well. Due to street running, there isn't much to see in Milford either, aside from the powerhouse on the west side of the Little Miami River.
The CM&B elected not to use the Cincinnati & Fayetteville's right-of-way to climb out of Milford to Mulberry for reasons that are unknown, and it simply followed OH-28 so there's nothing to see. Beyond Mulberry there is still quite a bit of right-of-way as it went across country, and one can follow it all the way to Blanchester without too much difficulty, even via aerial photographs. North of Newtonsville it ran to the west of Roudebush Road, though with pretty flat terrain and few sizable creeks there's not a whole lot of grading, though there are usually power lines.. The right-of-way through Stonelick State Park and Edenton is quite evident thanks to power lines. After it came in next to OH-133 at Taylor Pike it gets difficult to see but it's there.
Columbia - Bethel
1903-1918
Broad Gauge
Constructed by the Interurban Railway & Terminal Co., 1903
Abandoned, 1918
Three 5'-2 1/2" lines out of Cincinnati comprised this company. The first was built along the Ohio River to New Richmond (19 miles) in 1902 by the Cincinnati and Eastern Electric Railway. The second, the Suburban Traction Company, opened a line to Bethel (32 miles) in June 1903, and the third, the Rapid Railway, finished a line northeast to Lebanon (33 miles) in October of the same year. The three companies were consolidated in 1902. This company was also badly damaged by the flood of 1913, and in 1914 went into a receivership from which it was never removed. The Bethel line was particularly weak, since most of it was within sight of the Cincinnati Georgetown and Portsmouth, a somewhat stronger company. The IR&T Bethel line had the advantage of entry into the downtown area over the Cincinnati Street Railway, but this was not enough to save it, and it was abandoned in 1918. The remaining lines to Lebanon and New Richmond were abandoned in 1923. (From: Hilton, George W. and John F. Due, The Electric Interurban Railways in America. Stanford University Press, 1960)
This was probably the worst planned route for any of Cincinnati's interurbans. The IR&T line to Bethel was in direct competition with the CG&P that had been around for 30 years already (not that competition was uncommon in the industry). Considering how normal it is to take Beechmont Avenue from Columbia Parkway to get up to Mt. Washington today, the IR&T route through California seems rather circuitous. Regardless, the IR&T and the CG&P fought with one another on several occasions, but despite their competitive nature, they did cooperate on certain occasions, especially during floods or other disasters. One of the most contentious points, however, was the Donham Avenue Viaduct in Columbia. This single track viaduct was built to take the IR&T and the CG&P over the PRR/Little Miami Railroad to connect with the East End streetcar line. Because the two roads used this single track viaduct, going in both directions, it was frequently the site of delays. There are also reports of cars from one company blocking cars from the other company, and taking their passengers (usually the ones going to Coney Island amusement park). When the PRR line was elevated, both the CG&P and this line made the connection with the streetcars a little further to the northwest at Stanley Avenue, and the viaduct was removed. While the IR&T connected with the East End streetcar line here, the CG&P built a loop and a stucco station/office building just south of the PRR viaduct, in the park opposite Stacon Street. Competition from the CG&P, as well as the rather sparse population along the line, made for a rather short life. There had been talks of the CG&P taking over portions of the route, but it never happened. Ridership in 1912 was only 553,000, worse than the C&C and CM&L, though better than the Cincinnati & Eastern division which had only 357,000 passengers that same year, but these were the two weakest lines in the entire Cincinnati system.
The IR&T basically followed Kellogg Avenue on a double track route from Columbia to Coney Island. The single track lines to Bethel and New Richmond branched off at Sutton Road and the entrance to Coney Island. The Bethel line then went up the hill along Sutton, merging with and diverging from it many times along the way. From Columbia to Mt. Washington, there isn't much to see aside from a little grading along Sutton. Upon reaching Beechmont Avenue, there was a stub that went north for a few blocks to serve the Mt. Washington business district (this stub is shown on all maps, but it never extended north/west any farther, despite what the PUCO map shows). From this point on the IR&T followed Beechmont Avenue into Clermont County, and all the way to Bethel. Due to the relatively recent suburbanization of Anderson Township, and the prolific street running of the railway, there's nothing much left in Hamilton County. Though there are many utility poles all along Beechmont Avenue/Ohio Pike, they're not really a good indicator of the IR&T's location since the road has been so significantly widened.
Columbia - New Richmond
1902-1922
Broad Gauge
Constructed by the Interurban Railway & Terminal Co., 1902
Abandoned, 1922
Three 5'-2 1/2" lines out of Cincinnati comprised this company. The first was built along the Ohio River to New Richmond (19 miles) in 1902 by the Cincinnati and Eastern Electric Railway. The second, the Suburban Traction Company, opened a line to Bethel (32 miles) in June 1903, and the third, the Rapid Railway, finished a line northeast to Lebanon (33 miles) in October of the same year. The three companies were consolidated in 1902. This company was also badly damaged by the flood of 1913, and in 1914 went into a receivership from which it was never removed. The Bethel line was particularly weak, since most of it was within sight of the Cincinnati Georgetown and Portsmouth, a somewhat stronger company. The IR&T Bethel line had the advantage of entry into the downtown area over the Cincinnati Street Railway, but this was not enough to save it, and it was abandoned in 1918. The remaining lines to Lebanon and New Richmond were abandoned in 1923. (From: Hilton, George W. and John F. Due, The Electric Interurban Railways in America. Stanford University Press, 1960)
Not to be confused with the Cincinnati & Eastern Railroad, predecessor to the Norfolk & Western's Peavine route that also had a branch to New Richmond, this IR&T line is not quite as ludicrous as the one through Mt. Washington, but it still competed with the CG&P that had a short branch to Coney Island. After this single track line branched off from the Suburban Traction route to Bethel at Coney island, it flirted with US-52 on its way to New Richmond. It diverged from the road in many places, and ran on the road farther to the east, bearing to the north/east onto what is now Old Kellogg near Clermont County. Since the right-of-way was sandwiched between the river and the hillside, there were very few riders between California and New Richmond. As mentioned above, ridership on this branch line was only 357,000 in 1912, less than 1,000 passengers per day, making it the weakest interurban line in Cincinnati by quite a large margin. However, the interesting terrain would have made for a beautiful ride. Because of that rough terrain, landslides, floods, street running, and later construction of US-52, there is very little of this line left to see, save for some stone bridge abutments over Twelvemile Creek at the northern edge of New Richmond.
Columbia - Georgetown, branches to California, Batavia, Russellville, and Felicity
1877-1936
Narrow gauge, steam line constructed by the Cincinnati & Portsmouth Railroad, 1876
Renamed the Cincinnati, Georgetown & Portsmouth Railroad, 1880
Construction to Georgetown completed, 1886
Dual (narrow and standard) gauge California waterworks branch built, 1899
Converted to Standard Gauge & Electrified, waterworks branch extended to Coney Island and broad gauge rail added,1902
Batavia branch completed, 1903
Russellville branch completed, 1905
Felicity & Bethel branch completed, 1906
Steam freight service ended, 1915
City service to downtown suspended, 1918
Reorganized as the Cincinnati-Georgetown Railroad Co., 1927
California branch abandoned east of the waterworks, 1927
Felicity & Bethel branch abandoned, 1933
Batavia and Russellville branches abandoned, 1934
Passenger service suspended, and all service abandoned east of Bethel, 1935
All service abandoned, remaining track between Carrel Street and the waterworks sold to the city, 1936
City/waterworks use suspended, 1943
[Note there are many small mistakes in the following dates, refer to the years in the list above] This company completed a 3-foot-gauge steam railroad between Cincinnati and Georgetown (41 miles) in 1886, and in 1902 both converted it to standard gauge and electrified it. A branch from Lake Allyn to Batavia was opened at the same time. The company also operated a 5'-2 1/2" line to Coney Island that entered Cincinnati over the street railway. The standard-gauge line was extended from Georgetown to Russellville (8 miles) in 1904. An affiliate, the Felicity and Bethel Railroad (9 miles) was opened in 1906. The CG&P hoped to build east to Portsmouth, but although it did some grading between Russellville and West Union, it lacked the funds for completion. The road always retained much of the character of a shortline railroad, in spite of its electric operation. It interchanged railroad freight, operated a railway post office, and even interchanged a passenger car with a steam short-line, the Ohio River and Columbus Railway to serve Ripley, Ohio. the Felicity and Bethel used a steam locomotive for freight service.
The company failed in 1927 and was reorganized in 1928 as the Cincinnati Georgetown Railroad Company. The new corporation abandoned the Georgetown-Russellville extension in 1933, and in 1935 abandoned the outer 20 miles of the remaining main line, as well as the Batavia branch. It gave up passenger service at the same time. In 1936, it abandoned the rest of the property. (From: Hilton, George W. and John F. Due, The Electric Interurban Railways in America. Stanford University Press, 1960)
The Cincinnati, Georgetown & Portsmouth Railroad was one of the more unique interurban operations in Cincinnati, due to its narrow gauge history and complicated set of expansions, gauge change, and electrification in the early 20th century. The history is not unlike the Cincinnati & Lake Erie, which also had fairly meager beginnings as a narrow gauge steam railroad but grew into part of a larger system. The CG&P also served territory that had no other steam railroads, and although it wasn't nearly as strong as the lines north towards Dayton, it held its own well enough and almost became part of the large Pennsylvania Railroad empire. Land acquisition began in 1873 and construction of the narrow gauge steam railroad started in 1876. The first train ran to Mt. Carmel in 1877 and Amelia in 1878, with grading finished to White Oak. By this time the money was exhausted, and the line was put into receivership and reorganized in 1880. Construction continued, and the line reached Bethel in 1881 before stalling again due to a further lack of funds and damage from floods on the long trestle across the Little Miami Valley. 1886 saw completion of the massive White Oak trestle and operations finally reached Georgetown. That same year, the Cincinnati & Eastern (later the Norfolk & Western "Peavine") reached Portsmouth, ending all discussion of continuing CG&P construction further east.
The Railroad With 3 Gauges (the name of David McNeil's book on this railroad) operated at one point narrow, standard and broad gauge rails all at once from their Carrel Street yards to California. As a narrow gauge steam railroad in its early life, it was similar in character to the Cincinnati & Westwood and the College Hill Railroad, with aspirations for expansion not unlike the nearby Norfolk & Western Peavine or the Cincinnati, Lebanon & Northern, both of which also began life as narrow gauge railroads. However, even after electrification and conversion to standard gauge, the CG&P maintained its status as a railroad, just an electrified one, which gave it some advantages with the Public Utilities Commission. They were also able to continue interchanging freight with the Little Miami/Pennsylvania Railroad, which was notoriously hostile to interurbans. Nevertheless, the CG&P considered itself an interurban when it was deemed convenient, and although it had its own private right-of-way for pretty much its entire length, the sharp turns, heavy grades, and frequent stops (although it at least had a fair number of actual station buildings, platforms, and shelters) made it much more like other interurbans than a steam railroad. Had a less torturous route been surveyed, likely bypassing Mt. Washington in favor of an easier climb to the hilltops, it's possible the CG&P could have become a feeder branch to the Little Miami/Pennsylvania. It had both a direct connection with that line at Carrel Street, and by the turn of the 20th century it was owned by Little Miami/Pennsylvania officials, though no actual corporate takeover or merger was ever initiated.
Little happened with the CG&P until the waning days of the 19th century. Like many small narrow gauge systems, the CG&P operated only a few trains per day, with three scheduled trains and probably one or two unscheduled freights. By this time however there was a lot of buzz about the new electric interurban lines being built all over the country, while at the same time the problems of narrow gauge operations were well known and all efforts were being made to convert narrow gauge systems to standard gauge. At this same time, Cincinnati was planning to build a new water treatment plant in California, and they needed a way to haul in construction materials. The branch to the California waterworks was built in 1899, with the city of Cincinnati handling construction of the Lick Run Trestle over Kellogg Avenue, which was then leased to the CG&P. This branch line was built with a dual gauge, and the main line had a third rail added back to Carrel Street so standard gauge freight cars from the Little Miami/Pennsylvania Railroad could be hauled to the waterworks with the CG&P's narrow gauge locomotives. Note that dual gauge track on the CG&P was set up with only three rails, with all cars sharing the left rail when heading east. This saved money since only three rails were needed instead of four (or four instead of six for a three gauge setup), but it also meant that using different gauge cars or locomotives in a single manifest required offset couplers since the centerlines of the different gauges didn't match up. In 1900 the CG&P purchased a second hand standard gauge switcher locomotive to handle these movements. After construction of the plant was completed, the CG&P continued to bring in chemicals and sometimes coal, while also establishing passenger service for California residents.
1902 was the year that the CG&P was both converted to standard gauge as well as electrified, making it one of the first steam railroads in the country to convert to electricity. The company also changed hands and a number of loans were taken out to finance the reconstruction and expansion of the property. During construction of the competing broad gauge IR&T lines which could operate all the way to downtown, there was a push to extend the CG&P from the waterworks to Coney Island to capture some of that business, which would be a lot easier with electric cars. This extension was done to match the street railway's and IR&T's broad gauge tracks. The first electric car to Coney Island ran on July 26, at which point there were narrow, standard, and broad gauge tracks between Carrel Street and the waterworks, with broad gauge tracks from the waterworks through California to Coney Island. The main line was still narrow gauge from California Junction out to Georgetown, but there was some dual gauge trackage as well, at least to Mt. Washington. The final changeover from narrow gauge steam to standard gauge electric cars on the mainline happened on December 1, 1902. So there was only a three month period when all three gauges were used concurrently. After the final changeover, all the narrow gauge equipment was either scrapped or converted to standard gauge. Most of the old coaches were turned into waiting shelters, while some of the freight cars got new standard gauge trucks. Although this marked the end of steam passenger operations, the company continued to use standard gauge steam locomotives for freight service. The broad gauge city cars were not able to go downtown until mid-February 1903 when the Cincinnati Traction Company built the connecting tracks on Carrel to Kellogg and to the new Donham Avenue viaduct they were constructing for use by the CG&P and the IR&T lines. This viaduct allowed the CG&P cars to Coney Island and the IR&T to cross over the Little Miami Railroad and connect directly with the East End streetcar line to get downtown.
A brief mention must also be made about the Ohio River & Columbus Railroad, whose life was tightly entwined with that of the CG&P. As mentioned in the Norfolk & Western Peavine history, there were plans in the 1870s for the Columbus & Maysville to build a line between its namesake cities via Washington Courthouse, Hillsboro, Sardinia, Georgetown, Ripley, and Aberdeen. Only the leg between Hillsboro and Sardinia was completed however, in 1879, and it became the N&W Hillsboro branch after the usual mergers and acquisitions. The OR&C, an independent entity from the C&M, N&W, or CG&P, opened a standard gauge steam road between Sardinia and Ripley in 1903, presumably on the same route the C&M had proposed. Connections were made with the N&W at Sardinia, the CG&P at Georgetown, and riverboats at Ripley. However, extension to Aberdeen and electrification was never accomplished because of financial hardships. Due to the central connection at Georgetown with the CG&P, and more favorable freight handling rates than the N&W, the two railroads became rather dependent on one another. Nonetheless, there was an excessive amount of bickering over facilities in Georgetown, freight car charges, and other petty squabbles. With lousy connections to other railroads and a sparsely populated tributary area, the OR&C was abandoned in 1917. An accounting of the freight revenues for the line led CG&P officers to conclude it wasn't worth taking over.
Electrification was intended to breathe new life into the CG&P even with no more prospects for connecting to Portsmouth. A series of branches were opened to Batavia and Russellville in 1903 and 1905 respectively. Grading was completed east of Russellville to West Union, though funds were never available to lay track. The Felicity & Bethel, technically a separate entity, though functionally just another branch line, also opened in 1906. Even though revenues nearly doubled between the late 1890s and early 1900s, the CG&P and its various officers spent the next three decades trying to pay back the debt on the electrification, gauge change, and construction of the branch lines. This was a perpetual sore point, but considering the lousy grades, and other operational constraints that don't lend themselves well to steam operation, the money was probably well spent in the grand scheme of things.
The main line was very important for the city of Georgetown, which was its major supporter, while other communities such as Batavia and Felicity were rather ambivalent towards it. Due to the sparse population of the area, the road (like most interurbans) never saw stellar revenues, but it held its own longer than most in the area. Passenger counts were a respectable 1 million in 1912, which put the CG&P between the stronger IR&T Rapid Railway Division and the weaker CM&L. While passenger operations were switched to electric equipment in 1902, they continued to operate steam freight trains partly due to bad experiences with electric box motors and locomotives. However, a fatal accident where a steam freight train and an electric passenger car collided head-on prompted the forced retirement of all steam service in 1915. In 1917 the troublesome Donham Avenue viaduct was removed since the Pennsylvania/Little Miami Railroad raised their tracks through Columbia-Tusculum, creating overpasses at Delta and Stanley Avenues. The IR&T and CG&P financed construction of a new connecting track on Kellogg Avenue from Donham to Stanley Avenue, where the new connection to the street railway would be made. By 1918 the rental fees paid to the street railway to allow their California and Coney Island cars to reach downtown became too expensive, and city service was ended as well. They continued to operate a few cars to downtown for express freight service, but this was ended in 1922 when the IR&T was abandoned and the broad gauge tracks on Kellogg Avenue were torn up. Presumably the California branch was converted entirely to standard gauge in 1918. Keep in mind there was still dual standard/broad gauge track in place between Carrel Street and the waterworks for hauling standard gauge freight cars. Although it appears the broad gauge rail was left in place along parts of the California branch (specifically on the Lick Run Trestle, perhaps as a guard in case of derailment) until abandonment in the 1930s, the only actively used broad gauge track after 1918 was probably one or two yard tracks and the connector to the IR&T on Carrel Street itself. After the 1922 abandonment of the IR&T the entire property was standard gauge.
In 1924, the terminal was moved from Carrel Street to a new loop on the west side of Stanley Avenue across from Stacon Street. Although the IR&T had been abandoned and torn up two years earlier, the CG&P was still able appropriate the IR&T franchise agreement with the city to operate over Kellogg Avenue. A new track was built along the side of the street, which had to be moved in 1927 when the street was widened and repaved. It appears that a new connector track a short ways south of Carrel Street was built as well, since the old broad gauge track in the middle of Carrel was likely scrapped in 1922 when the IR&T was abandoned. A two story stucco station and office was built at Stanley Avenue, and even though there was no physical connection to the street railway, the new loop was just on the other side of the railroad embankment from the East End car line, instead of a block away as it was at Carrel. After this point, Carrel was only used for car storage and freight, and all passenger cars terminated at Stanley. In 1925 there was a slight rerouting of the California branch as well. The 1902 extension to Coney Island was built through California via Lineman Street, jogging west southwest at the I-275 Combs Hehl Bridge approach, and terminating at the western tip of Lake Como. This was an ok entrance to the amusement park, but the new race track that was opened a year earlier was too far away from the west gate to walk. The CG&P built a new track between California and Coney Island's main entrance at Sutton Road in time for the July start of the 1925 racing season. New track was built from about where Lineman Street ends in the RiverCity Sports Complex on a tangent towards Kellogg Avenue. It intersected and crossed Kellogg at a slight bend in the road that remains under the I-275 overpass and ran along the northeast side of Kellogg for about 500 feet before crossing back to the southwest side of Kellogg at Two Mile (which used to intersect southeast of today's ramps to and from I-275 eastbound). It's anyone's guess why the track had to cross Kellogg, because that initially made the city hesitate to grant permission for the new routing. After returning to the southwest side of Kellogg, the track ran a good distance off the side of the street, and it appears to overlap the current location of the entrance ramp into Coney Island. How far towards Riverbend the new extension went is unclear, but it may have only gone just past the main entrance to Coney Island, ending somewhere in the grass next to the Sunlite Pool. Despite the more convenient terminal location and rerouting of the California branch, the end came rather quickly, as passenger and freight traffic dropped off markedly in the late 1920s and 30s.
Reorganization of the company as the Cincinnati-Georgetown Railroad and abandonment of the Coney Island branch east of the waterworks came in July 1927 (barely two years after rerouting) while the company retrenched and tried to economize the remainder of their operations. Nevertheless, auto competition and the Great Depression took its toll, on top of new owners (namely Lawrence Van Ness) who were mainly interested in the electric service, and weren't interested in operating a railroad. As the Depression set in, branch lines were cut and mainline service reductions started in 1933. The Felicity & Bethel, for instance, saw so little patronage that the motorman who operated the car on that line routinely fell asleep at the controls, leading to a few minor wrecks before he was finally fired. By 1936 the CG&P was out of business and its assets were scrapped, with most of the electric lines going to the Union Gas and Electric Company. There were talks of the Cincinnati Street Railway taking over the route to Mt. Washington and/or California, since the residents of those neighborhoods wanted more frequent service (both the CG&P and the IR&T ran cars only about every 2 hours) and the 5 cent city fare. The Cincinnati Street Railway determined that there was not enough population in either neighborhood, and the line would operate at a loss after the extensive needed repairs and the change to broad gauge were finished, even if the property was obtained for free. The city of Cincinnati did purchase the western end of the CG&P however, though only for freight service to the California waterworks. They abandoned the electric power and bought a gasoline switcher for use on the line. Even this proved too expensive, and the last freight run was in 1943. The spur off the PRR tracks at Carrel Street remains to this day however, and a chemical loading platform on that spur was still in use by the water works (and possibly the adjacent Metropolitan Sewer District treatment plant) into the late 20th century.
There's nothing to see of the CG&P's later terminal at Stanley, as both that street and Kellogg Avenue have been widened, and the loop and terminal building are long gone. There's more to see in Columbia, also the location of an old PRR station at Carrel Street, at the edge of the Little Miami Valley. There are still some tracks splitting off the PRR line at Carrel Street leading to the aforementioned loading platform which has been restored with historical plaques and is now a trailhead for the Ohio River Trail. Right next to Lunken Airport there is a low flood wall that used to be a wooden CG&P trestle that was eventually filled with earth. The route ran straight to the Little Miami River, though a more recent expansion of the airport's property at its far southern tip necessitated relocating the flood wall. A stone bridge pier off the recreational trail near the river marks where it used to cross. In the winter, one can see the right-of-way climbing up and winding around the hill at the edge of California Woods Preserve. About half way up the hill to Mt. Washington, the branch line to Coney Island split off from the main line at California Junction, which is also the name of the hiking trail that runs along the roadbed. There's some interesting stuff left here under the old junction, just east of a sharp bend in Kellogg Avenue. Some foundation piers for the trestle are still embedded in the hillside, electric sub-transmission lines follow the route, and there is an odd road loop on the south/eastbound side of the street that sort of looks like a bus or streetcar loop. This was actually the eastbound lanes of Kellogg Ave. There was a fat steel support column for the railroad trestle above which split the lanes of the road around it. Apparently they only recently fixed it and abandoned the old outer lanes, leaving this "loop" that's now barricaded off. There's not much to see of the branch line in California except grading, and nothing remains at all near Coney Island due to the construction of I-275.
The main line continued the climb up the hill back in California Woods. There's a road called Moon Valley Lane that leads to the right-of-way. This road ends with a driveway to the front and to the left. The driveway to the left is the right-of-way, and if you look to the right the right-of-way follows a little cut in the hill and bends to the south. There's nothing to see along Apple Hill or Salem Roads which were bridged by wooden trestles, but north of here the right-of-way is a bit more evident. The old Mt. Washington station is on Sutton Road, it's an American Legion Hall now. Behind there is an electrical substation and a parking lot and a fence line that follows the rail bed. The line then curved southeast and wiggled around a bit before shooting east-northeast towards Clermont County. Because of suburban development, there's nothing much left to see except some houses that are older than the rest. The CG&P and the New Richmond Branch of the C&E crossed each other and Clough Pike in a small valley at the border between Hamilton and Clermont Counties. There's some streets and driveways between here and the I-275/OH-32 interchange that mark the route, although nothing at all remains in Eastgate due to road construction and more suburban strip development. Much evidence remains beyond Eastgate however, as the area becomes more rural. Olive Branch and the former Lake Allyn are still relatively unscathed (though Lake Allyn itself has been drained due to sediment buildup). Jeff Wood has provided several pictures of the line through Clermont County and points east.
L&F-Lebanon & Franklin Traction Company
Lebanon - Franklin
1904-1919
Standard Gauge
Constructed by the Lebanon & Franklin Traction Company in 1904
Abandoned, 1919
This interurban was opened on May 28, 1904, between the towns of its name, which were 11 miles apart. It connected at Lebanon with the broad-gauge Interurban Railway and Terminal Company and at Franklin with the Ohio Electric's Cincinnati-Dayton line, from which it purchased power. It carried passengers in a coach and combine. Short interurbans that served no important center of population were the weakest in the industry, and thus it is not surprising that this company was among the first to be abandoned. On December 11, 1918, the Ohio Public Utilities Commission granted it permission to abandon, effective January 1, 1919. (From: Hilton, George W. and John F. Due, The Electric Interurban Railways in America. Stanford University Press, 1960)
After construction of the nearby Miamisburg & Germantown Traction Company was completed in 1901, Robert E. Kline, heading up a group of Dayton investors, was looking for another traction line to build. After a number of proposed interurbans through Lebanon failed to materialize, the promoters secured a right-of-way mostly along Ohio Route 123, and grading began in earnest in July of 1903. Warren County Commissioners would not grant a franchise to use the public highway between Franklin and Lebanon, so the bulk of the right-of-way was purchased or gifted by farmers next to the road. A difficult winter slowed construction, and a major rainstorm in March 1904 washed out the company's bridge over Clear Creek in Franklin. The first car ran to Lebanon on May 28, 1904, and regular service began shortly thereafter. Dreams of large freight hauls and throngs of passengers never materialized. The L&F limped along carrying the usual assortment of infrequent travellers and school children. Modest amounts of farm produce were carried to Lebanon for further shipment to Cincinnati, or to Franklin heading for Dayton. Miscellaneous merchanidise bound for a general store in Red Lion, at the half way point between Lebanon and Franklin, rounded out the freight hauling business. With the approach of World War I, ridership and finances were dwindling, and raising fares and attempting to economize operations didn't help. The last run was made on December 31, 1918, after which point the line was scrapped and the land reverted back to its original owners.
Two cars ran on the Lebanon & Franklin, purchased from Barney & Smith Car Company in Dayton. They were double-ended cars as there were no loops or turnarounds at either end of the line. After abandonment the cars were sold to locals. The company office and carbarn was at 6th and Main in Franklin, shared with the Southern Ohio Traction Company. The power plant for the Southern Ohio in Franklin was on Main Street a few blocks south of 6th, where the Lebanon & Franklin connected. The building survived into the 1970s but appears to have been demolished since. With a weak power system, the Lebanon & Franklin cars had difficulty climbing to the high point of the line around Red Lion, as grading was fairly minimal.
Due to this line's short life, and route across relatively flat terrain, there is very little left of it to see anymore. The main artifacts are a stone bridge abutment along state route 123, and some telephone poles in Red Lion. Street widening near Lebanon and Franklin has obliterated most other traces of the line near its terminal cities.