Midwest Interurbans

In the early decades of the last century, you could go anywhere by railroad. If the steam roads couldn’t take you somewhere, then the interurbans and trolleys could. This video features rare film of several interurbans from the nation’s heartland as they ran out their final years. We begin with the Illinois Terminal. The IT was a big road with lines from St. Louis to Peoria via Springfield and from Springfield to Bloomington via Decatur. We ride the “Bloomington Line” from Decatur through Mackinaw Junction. In Iowa, we ride the Waterloo, Cedar Falls and Northern while we chat with the motorman, run past an unusual dog and turn on the streets of Cedar Falls, all in the early ’50’s. Finally, we take a tour of Chicago area transportation system in the same era. The Chicago, North Shore and Milwaukee, the Chicago, Aurora and Elgin, the Illinois Central electrics, the Chicago, South Shore and South Bend and an assortment of lines in the RTA.