All that traction action without satisfaction

Fairfield was inside a conversation in 1911 about being connected to an interurban railroad line that would have gone north through Richmond and south to Cincinnati. The line was to connect Union City to a lot of places in the Miami Valley.

That conversation was worth the paper it was printed on. Regular dispatches from Richmond fed the beast. Traction news was all the rage.

The grand-and-glorious kingmakers in Richmond, seeing themselves as the literal center of the universe, wanted "traction" to Cincinnati. These folks were constantly devising ways of enriching their world by getting other people to pay for it. 

"Traction" is another word for electric train travel. The concept took hold in the late 1890s in urban areas and by around 1905, had hooked many towns together with useful if unpredictable rail travel. Relatively safe is the optimum description. INTERURBAN LINK 

Inadequate management is another. Poorly financed over bad track that was vulnerable to the weather and shoddy construction, the interurbans were a glittering object like you'd get at the carnival -- and essentially equal in investment value. The lines were surveyed by local people and stock was sold on the promise that the money would come with it through various municipal venues.

The few lines that survived avoided these pitfalls. World War I took care of the rest of it, siphoning off resources to be sent to Europe to fight the conflict there. Twenty years of promise. All in all, probably worth it.

The line was to go from Richmond south through Liberty, Fairfield, Brookville, Cedar Grove, on into Harrison and Cincy. The total cost in 1911 dollars was a little over $1 million, to be paid for one town at a time.

By 1912, nobody in Richmond was interested in it. Instead, Milton wanted a line to Connersville, which might have included Liberty and Oxford. Richmond stopped caring about its line to Union City and decided Portland was better.

Chicago didn't care. They were building what we now use as the South Shore to South Bend, where it could go anyplace the public wanted it to go. Everybody wanted traction and the mere topic spurred incredible frenzy. (The South Shore continues to be a strong and viable commuter line, a modern hat tip to the past.)

If all the problems that could kill traction hadn't happened -- the one monster that could, did.

We know it as the automobile.

Traction was amazing and magical. It helped create Indiana's passion for high school basketball by making tournaments possible for schools that otherwise traveled in the mud. It spurred industry, moved people into a different (not necessarily better) world and conceivably could be a solution to some of our environmental problems today. That is not an absolute. Nothing ever is.