Indiana Historical Society

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In July 1928 Interstate’s Louisville route suffered major readjustments when the Big Four Bridge was closed for rebuilding and strengthening. This meant the main-line service ended in Jeffersonville, with no rail service between Jeffersonville and Louisville. Local passengers had to either take the ferry or the long way around through New Albany into Louisville. There was an alternate main line available, via bus from Sellersburg across the Kentucky and Indiana bridge. This less than satisfactory situation lasted until the rebuilt Big Four Bridge was opened in July 1929.

A second blow to Interstate passenger traffic occurred when the new municipal highway bridge between Jeffersonville and Louisville was completed in 1929. This shorter and faster route allowed many former Interstate passengers to drive cars or take the bus across the river, and local rail traffic immediately decreased a reported 40 percent. Interstate did receive some compensation, however. Its riverside docks received considerable amounts of cement, sand, and other construction materials that were transferred onto barges and moved out to the new bridge caissons and piers.

The Interstate lines were always susceptible to flooding, from the local ones that hampered the building of the original Indianapolis and Louisville line in 1907 to the worst of them all—the Ohio River valley flood that rampaged the Midwest in 1937.

Heavy rains hit the Jeffersonville and New Albany areas for eleven days beginning 13 January, and by 21 January all cross-river and local railway service had been suspended. By 27 January more than 70 percent of Jeffersonville’s and 55 percent of New Albany’s incorporated area was under water, when the river reached its highest crest in history. The water then began to slowly recede and by 7 February was back to its normal level. However, rail service was slow to resume, and it was another four to six weeks before normal service was available. Interstate’s main-line service was also deluged by numerous washouts as far north as Columbus, and through Indianapolis to Louisville service was not resumed until 22 February.

Along with the rest of the interurban industry, Interstate was hard hit by the triple blows of the 1929 stock market crash, the Great Depression, and the 1935 Public Securities Holding Act. (The act, requiring the separation of utilities and electric railroads, was the death knell for interurbans.) Merged into the Midland United Company, the main line was leased to Indiana Railroad (IRR), which in October 1939 abandoned the Seymour to Louisville section of the line due to insufficient traffic. While possibly not fully recognized at the time, this action effectively condemned the Indianapolis to Seymour stub to a slow, lingering fade into history.

However, IRR continued to operate the Seymour line on a thirty-two trains per day schedule. This operation continued until January 1941, when IRR returned the property to the Public Service Company of Indiana (PSCI), which operated a franchise holding one daily round-trip until a stupidly ironic collision on 8 September 1941 demolished the majority of the line’s rolling stock, suspending service permanently. PSCI then bought out of its ninety-nine-year-lease with Indianapolis, Columbus and Southern, and the line was scrapped.

Eight September 1941—the end of the Interstate operation, and effectively the end of the interurban in Indiana—is a date that is still recalled by former passengers, residents in towns along the line, and countless interurban railroad fans as truly a day that will live in infamy.

Which bring us to the giant question—WHAT IF?
—What if Public Service had several other passenger cars available and had been able to continue service?
—What if the line had been able to serve Camp Atterbury—one of the largest military training camps in the country—after it opened just northwest of Edinburgh in 1942?
—What if the line had been able to continue operating after World War II and through the succeeding decades to the present? Could it operate yet today as a suburban light rail?
To quote Maud Muller: “For all sad words, of tongue or pen, The saddest are these—It might have been!”

Surprisingly, the ghost of the old Interstate lingers today. When the Seymour to Louisville stretch was abandoned by IRR in 1929, a new company was incorporated to connect the Louisville Cement Company at Speed with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad line southwest of Charlestown. This company, the Southern Indiana Railway, bought four pieces of electrical equipment from IRR and began serving the plant on 18 March 1940. Converted to diesel operation in 1947, it continues service today over several miles of the old Interstate right-of-way.

The question is often asked, “Are there any Interstate cars surviving today?” As far as can be determined, the only ones known to still exist are:
—suburban car #263, operating under wire at the California Railroad Museum
—sleeper #167, under restoration in Squamish British Columbia
—steel express motor #425, shortened some fifteen feet and reportedly still operating under diesel power in Ohio
There may possibly be some others, long hidden away and/or converted to other uses, which might show up some day—fans and historians can still hope!