Indiana Interurbans / Streetcars
Indianapolis Railways
Updated January 9 2017
A Note on finding Indiana Interurban and Streetcar items
Bottom Line Up Front: It's really complicated. I don't know how many different Indiana interurbans came to be,
but Jerry Marlette wrote a book Electric Railroads of Indiana where he wrote "Case Histories"
(start date, original or successor company, capital stock, first operation date, area served/mileage, rolling stock,
final status of line, remarks) of all he could find, which extended almost 100 pages. In short, I can't begin to
hope to capture everything
Another deeper level of complication was that with the diversity of operations, the line between a small city streetcar
and a large interurban car was blurred -- some single truck cars went between cities especially in the early years.
Are those streetcars or interurbans? How does one tell whether such a small car in a given location was a
streetcar or interurban?
Rather than toss in the towel, I divided the Indiana world up into ... did the line eventually fold into the
Indiana Railroad, or didn't it? A secret decoder ring for city service follows. Use Bill Vandervoort's map
from the Links menu to help figure out where to look for certain cars.
| Streetcars | Found Here |
|---|
| Anderson | BecameIRR - UnionTractionStreetcars |
| Beech Grove | IndyRwys |
| Elkhart | NotPartOfIRR - Northern Indiana |
| Elwood | BecameIRR - UnionTractionStreetcars |
| Fort Wayne | BecameIRR - IndServCorpStreetcars |
| Goshen | NotPartOfIRR - Northern Indiana |
| Indianapolis | IndyRwys |
| Lafayette | BecameIRR - IndServCorpStreetcars |
| LaPorte | NotPartOfIRR - Northern Indiana |
| Logansport | BecameIRR - IndServCorpStreetcars |
| Marion | BecameIRR - UnionTractionStreetcars |
| Muncie | BecameIRR - UnionTractionStreetcars |
| Peru | BecameIRR - IndServCorpStreetcars |
| South Bend | NotPartOfIRR - Northern Indiana |
| Terre Haute | BecameIRR - THI&E |
| Wabash | BecameIRR - IndServCorpStreetcars |
If you have comments, suggestions or caption edits, please email me by clicking HERE.
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