Erie Chicago area commuter service?

[NKP1155]

Can any of you direct me to information about Erie commuter service around Chicago up to the end of WWI? WJPowers

[shlustig]

Have you checked the book by Craig Sanders which covers all Indiana passenger services including chicago commuters?

[Roadgeek Adam]

http://www.railroad.net/forums/viewtopi ... 85&t=77481

There was a thread about this over 4 years ago. Teachers in rural Indiana who had to commute between Monterey and Leiters Ford, Indiana interestingly enough, rode milk trains to get from work each day in the mid-10s.

[Tommy Meehan]

There was also a post in that thread with links to a 1900 suburban timetable showing a limited suburban service between Chicago and Rochester IN (100.6 miles). They sold monthlies as far east as Crown Point, 36.1 miles from Chicago. However if you look at the scheduled train times it wasn't really a traditional commuter service.

Here's the post:

Guess what, there was such a service! Not much but enough to rate a little time table. Go to:
http://www.railfan.net/lists/mplist.cgi ... to&year=05 and scroll down to February 26, 2005. There you will find a four page timetable for suburban service between Chicago and Rochester, IN for the year 1900. It includes schedule and fares. There were three trains each way and it is possible that the middle one was a mixed train. Nevertheless, the first page does label it as suburban service. Ted

[The EGE]

Updated direct link.

[Tommy Meehan]

Looking at Erie's 1900 suburban schedule for Chicago, I noticed the trains shown don't really look like conventional commuter trains. They don't run at the usual times. But the suburban schedule from 1900 linked above showed 54-trip monthly tickets were sold as far east as Crown Point. The tickets were good only by the person "named on the ticket" and for one calendar month. Who would buy those tickets if not commuters?

I looked at two other Official Guides (1898 and 1909) that are available on-line to see if the local service offered by the Erie out of Chicago was much different than in 1900. The 1898 schedule didn't really show a conventional commuter schedule either, but the 1909 schedule showed a pair of trains -- Nos. 9 and 26 -- that would probably serve commuters pretty well.

Here's the list I made:



I notice that in the morning, at least until 1909, there is no train due in Chicago before 9:00 AM other than No. 3 which was the Vestibuled Limited departing Jersey City in mid-afternoon. If I'm going to work I don't think I would want to count on a train coming from almost 1,000 miles away, departing it's original terminal some thirty hours earlier. In the evening, before 1909 the last train out of Chicago was at 4:10 PM. Kind of early for commuters. Yet Erie was already selling 54-trip monthlies. I wonder who would have bought them?