in a wind tunnel helped the design of the famed Brill Bullet cars of the Philadelphia & Western Railroad. In Massachusetts, the Worcester Poly-
technic Institute (WPI) engaged a new facul- ty member who had been involved with the Purdue program. Harold B. Smith, a native of Worcester, graduated from Cornell Uni- versity in 1891 and was appointed to be the first director of the School of Electrical Engi- neering at Purdue. In 1896, Mr. Smith was appointed head of Electrical Engineering at WPI. To stimulate the teaching of electrical engineering, Professor Smith hired Albert S. Richey, who had been the chief engineer for the Union Traction Co. of Indiana. In 1907, Professor Richey and his students set up an electric railway laboratory with the aim of creating an electric railway testing facility. Car No. 1907, similar to a Midwestern in- terurban, was purchased from the Cincin- nati Car Co. in 1907. It was mainly used around New England to test rail bonds, which are the copper connectors welded to the ends of rail to insure the efficient return of electrical current to the power plant. It is no surprise that the Purdue facility for railway testing was well-known by rail enthusiasts in Indiana and the Midwest, but the WPI contribution has been largely un- known outside of New England. I found out about it from an excellent article entitled “The Electric Railway Laboratory and Trol- ley Test Car of the Worcester Polytechnic In- stitute,” by Edward A. Anderson in the Sep- tember/October 2012 issue of the Rollsign, published by the Boston Street Railway As- sociation, P.O. Box 101037, Boston, MA, 02118-1037;
www.thebsra.org. Rollsign is an excellent magazine that concentrates main- ly on New England transit news.
Passenger Trains to Cape Cod With the support of Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority will begin rail passenger service between Boston and Hyannis on Cape Cod. It is expected that the service
will commence around Memorial
Day 2013. The Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority will play a major role in the serv- ice, which is to be operated only in the sum- mer. The ride is expected to take two hours each way and will cost $30.00 round trip. There was rail service to Hyannis back in the 1980s, but it did not operate from South Station in Boston. Passengers had to take the MBTA Red Line rapid transit service to the Braintree station and board a Cape Cod & Hyannis train. The new service will start at South Station and will thus be more con- venient than the earlier rail offering. Thanks to Peter Perreault for the good news.
Things Needed in Rail Transportation A subject that the late William D. Middleton and I discussed at great length was the need for a definitive book on commuter railroads in the U.S. Most of you are familiar with Bill’s books The Time of the Trolley and The Interurban Era that he wrote for Kalmbach, and Metropolitan Railways, published by the Indiana University Press. We agreed that a definitive book on commuter railways in the U.S. was needed and Bill and I entered into serious talks and, indeed, just three weeks before Bill’s death in the summer of 2011, we were still exchanging outlines. Is there a serious scholar of urban rail- ways out there who would wish to write a re-
ally good, in-depth work on the subject of U.S. commuter railways? If so, I would like to see a serious proposal for such a work. My address is given below.
Why don’t I do it myself? Never undertake
a two- to four-year project with an author or authors who are over 70 years of age!
Flashes It was a blast from the past. I’m sure most of you have read about the massive explosion in the Richmond Hill area south of INDI- ANAPOLIS in November 2012. As I write this, the blast is being investigated not as an accident, but as a homicide. When describing what had happened, the Indianapolis Star noted that it was near Stop Eleven Road. There are very few things of a tangible na- ture remaining from the great electric in- terurban railway network that radiated from Indianapolis, but Stop Eleven Road is a remainder and a reminder. The road was named after the eleventh stop on the Inter- state Public Service interurban line from In- dianapolis to Louisville by way of Columbus and Seymour, Ind. If I recall accurately, sev- eral other roads in the Indianapolis area are named for interurban stops. HOUSTON, TEXAS, already has a light rail rapid transit line in the downtown area. The cars are used very intensely and the rail service is deemed a big success deserving of enlargement. The bigger system will need rolling stock, and Siemens Mobility won a contract in mid-October 2012 for 19 S70 light rail cars. These will be added to the 18 Siemens cars now in service. The cost of the new cars is reported to be $92 million. Thanks to John A. Lee for the news. UPGRADING rail equipment and facili- ties is going on all over the country. Transit systems are adding amenities to the rolling stock and to fixed facilities. In some places, riding a bicycle to the station has become popular and in Washington, the Metrorail system has more than 4000 bicycle rack spaces. New dual-powered locomotives have been delivered to New Jersey Transit and the Agence Métropolitaine de Transport in Montréal, Québec; this means the same loco- motives can use power from the overhead catenary or from its own diesel engine. Thanks to David Harris for the news. A new football stadium is to be built in LOS ANGELES for a football team the city hopes to welcome. Farmer’s Field stadium (the proposed name) is close to the Pico Boulevard rail station. The Anschutz Enter- tainment Group, which is building the stadi- um, plans to double the size of the Pico Sta- tion in order to handle the crowds going to and from the stadium. It is expected the sta- tion expansion will cost about $10 million. Thanks to Frank Bauer for the news. Those readers who have access to the Bal- timore Sun should be sure to read the columns of Jackques Kelly, who writes about the neighborhoods of BALTIMORE and Baltimore County and often relates how the place came to be what it is because of the transportation service available. A Septem- ber 1, 2012, column was about the village of Glyndon between Reisterstown and Wor- thington Valley along the line of the old Western Maryland Railroad. Commuter trains on the WM were the link to jobs in downtown Baltimore and folks could live in a pleasant village and still enjoy the benefits of the big city. Henry Goode was the kind supplier of the information.
From Then to Now, To There and Back
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