Indiana Historical Society

Interstate Public Service—Your Neighborhood Interurban
Jerry Marlette

The Interstate Public Service family tree actually began in 1890, when the New Albany Highland Railway Company built a tiny, one-and-a-half-mile line from the west end of New Albany some two hundred feet up the hills to the Silver Hills suburb. The line opened 17 May 1892 and is recognized by many as being the first interurban line in Indiana, operating before several other claimants to the title. Too small a line? Not according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which defined an interurban as “a railway having more than half its trackage outside of municipal limits.”

In the minds of the general public, however, the 1 January 1900 entry into Indianapolis by the Indianapolis, Greenwood and Franklin Railroad was the first actual interurban service of note. While only a trial run, rolling over an uncompleted roadway, city residents welcomed the first car with open arms, little realizing they were seeing the first of hundreds of thousands of cars that would eventually serve the capital. Regular service between Indianapolis and Greenwood began 16 January.

Service over this line was gradually expanded southward to Franklin on 6 June 1901, and by 1902 the line had captured 98 percent of the total local rail traffic between the two cities. Further extensions were made to Columbus on 19 September 1902 and to Seymour on 21 October 1907.

The company underwent several name changes, to Indianapolis, Columbus and Southern Traction in 1902 and to Interstate Public Service in 1912. It eventually acquired all of the interurban and city railway properties between Indianapolis and Louisville and was finally renamed Public Service Company of Indiana in 1931, under which name it finally abandoned the last section between Indianapolis and Seymour in 1941.

The early Interstate operations were typical Indiana interurban style, using lightweight wooden passenger cars and a few small express or freight motors converted from the early small passenger cars.

As the years passed, however, the company grew into a full-service interurban line, carrying passengers in steel state-of-the-art cars. Dining cars were provided on select runs between the Indianapolis and Louisville terminals, as was overnight sleeper service (one of three interurban sleeper services in the United States).

Express packages and closed pouch mail were carried on most runs, along with considerable loads of newspapers. A first-rate freight service was offered from Indianapolis to points as far away as Atlanta, Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo through a multistate network of interurban and steam road connections.

As mentioned above, Interstate operated top of the line equipment. The steel passenger cars, built by Cincinnati Car Company in 1921, were sixty-two feet long and carried fifty-five seated passengers. In accord with practices of the day, they were divided into three compartments—main passenger, smoking, and baggage (the baggage compartments had fold down seats to carry overloads on heavy traffic days). These cars were supplemented by 1907 Niles wooden-passenger motors that were rebuilt into steel forty-seven- passenger trailers.

The first diners were built by American Car and Foundry in Jeffersonville in 1923 and 1924 and seated twenty-six passengers at two- and four-seat tables and individual armchairs. The diners provided full service, offering coffee, light lunches, and complete dinners at, notably, prices that would break your heart today, such as a small steak for only a dollar and a quarter! A later diner was the rebuilt Winona Service 1910 Jewett. Placed in service in 1926 as the first all-electric interurban diner in the country, the car seated twenty-five.

Obviously, the “crown jewels” of Interstate’s passenger service were its sleepers. Beginning in 1924, the twenty, larger than Pullman-sized, berths attracted industry-wide attention and quickly became popular with the traveling public, although there were some questions as to the practicality of a seven-hour, 117-mile trip, even though it did tend to balance expenses of the trip. (As in all traveling, the passenger either liked it or did not.)

While the various Interstate companies offered frequent summer excursions between the Indianapolis and Louisville terminals, from the early 1910s up until the final days of operation, by far the most popular were the “Meet the Boat” trains. Excursion tickets were sold on the 6:00 A.M. local from Seymour, which connected with the 9:00 A.M. steamer out of Louisville for Cincinnati.

The steamer proceeded upstream to Carrollton, Kentucky, where it tied up to the bank, and the passengers transferred to another boat for the return to Louisville. The trips were offered from 1915 until 1918, when the two steamers were destroyed in a massive ice gorge at Cincinnati.

Many cars were chartered to numerous points along the line by such varied groups as high school athletic teams, community baseball clubs and fans, political and business groups, and nature study clubs.

Interstate conducted a widespread less than carload freight service in conjunction with other traction lines throughout the Midwest, and, through transfers at key points, with many steam railroads. On its own line, the company hauled logs, glucose, livestock, milk cans, manufactured products (including corrugated cartons from Inland Container in Indianapolis to the canning factory at Austin and canned goods out of the cannery), gravel and sand, and automobile parts.

Almost unknown was the Jeffersonville dock complex, which through the years handled varying small loads of freight to and from Ohio River boat traffic. A major expansion of the docks was planned in 1922 to handle continuing loads of barge freight from Pittsburgh and other eastern points to the docks for transshipment. However, the financial costs of the dock rebuilding and expansion along with the costs of the extra cars to handle the expanded service, which were estimated at a million dollars, were too great to overcome, and the plans were abandoned.

Freight customers were also well served with special trains for a number of business and agricultural associations. Notable among the latter was the 1925 “Daisy Sire Special,” a four-car train that traveled the line presenting the latest in dairy farm procedures.

Express was a key service. Handled on all cars, small-town merchants could order items from Indianapolis suppliers in the morning and have them on their shelves in the afternoon. In addition, full express cars were run daily between the terminals, as well as special cars for the major express companies.

One of the principal objections to the interurban was the time that it took to travel between terminals. On the 117-mile Indianapolis to Louisville run, for instance, the 1910 schedule called for a running time of exactly four hours. Today this seems excruciatingly slow, but—compare this time to what could be expected from an automobile traveling the same route over the so-called highways (dirt and gravel) of the time—the average road time of the day would at best be about seven hours. Of course, this assumed the roads would not be too muddy, too rutted, or too snowy to drive over. Not to mention the clouds of dust in the summer.

Over time the main highways were paved, and by the early 1930s autos could make the run in about four hours (if they observed the speed limits). By this time the interurbans had cut their running time to three hours and fifteen minutes.

Still seem slow? The 1933 Electric Traction magazine ranked Interstate (now operated by Indiana Railroad) in the nation’s number seven spot with a thirty-nine-mile-per-hour route speed, including stops. On the Interstate line these included a possible seventeen station and 125 flag stops. Obviously, not all of these would be incurred on every run, but they were there, many of them farm driveways that were required to be served by their original land leases to the railway. One can well imagine the frustration felt by the motorman of the big combine when, just after attaining running speed, he was flagged by a white handkerchief waving at an isolated farm crossing. But, when one is operating the neighborhood interurban, one must be neighborly, so cut the power, slam on the brake, and greet the new passengers with a welcoming smile.

Interstate and its predecessor lines promoted safe operating practices from day one. Indianapolis, Columbus and Southern was one of the first interurban lines to require full train order dispatching in 1906; Indianapolis and Louisville provided complete protection by standard crossing signs in 1910; and Interstate operated a systemwide safety car in 1927. However, all of these efforts were not enough. Motorists continued to drive in front of trains (vivid portrayals of the dangers involved failed to discourage this fatal practice), and pedestrians insisted in walking across the tracks in front of oncoming cars. In 1922 Interstate released its first warning poster. While eye catching, to say the least, the company could not accurately determine its effectiveness, and in 1924 it was replaced by a less graphic poster.

Despite the many auto and pedestrian incidents, the company suffered only one accident that involved passenger fatalities. This occurred on the Big Four Bridge between Jeffersonville and Louisville on the snowy night of 14 January 1918, when Dixie Flyer car number 204 crashed into the rear of an overloaded Louisville local number 402, which had slowed down for the descent on the south bridge approach due to poor visibility. The Flyer crushed the local’s rear platform, killing 3 passengers and injuring more than 20 others, including several who were thrown to the ground some fifty feet below the bridge. Most of the estimated 150 passengers on the local were workers from the Jeffersonville Quartermaster Depot who were returning home to Louisville.