places with interurban rail

do u know of any area that has the old style interurban light rail today?

rail10 wrote:do u know of any area that has the old style interurban light rail today?

What are you talking about? Are you asking about literally light rail, as in 70#-85# or so? Or are you talking about currently active lines that have interurban-like operating characteristics?

Frank Hicks

That's going to be a hard question to answer since no one, really, ever knew what an interurban really was. The best definition I've seen is: an electric railway, using "enhanced" streetcar technologly, which connects two towns or cities no less than 10 miles apart, with mostly ( but not exclusively) PRW, with an average terminal to terminal speed of about 15 MPH, and which actually reaches a top speed of no slower than 40 MPH.

Most of the old interurbans, with some very notable exceptions, ran basically single car passenger trains.

The modern Light Rail System does have many of these characteristics, and the quality of its infratructure often exceeds that of the typical interurban, but, again with exceptions, tends to run multi car trains, and often runs wholly within a city or metropolitan area.

This is a question which probably cannot be definitavely answered.

How about SEPTA's ex-Red Arrow division, PAT's line to Library and the South Shore Line ? These are remnants of true interurbans.

As for the South Shore, there are still a few tracks at mc shops with rail that dates back to the teen's. The oldest piece I've seen there so far was dated about 1915. That's Lake shore vintage!

Definitions of an interurban certainly can be argued. Because Dad gave me the thrill of riding the Liberty Bell Limited two or three times from Allentown to Upper Darby, and we also rode the Electroliner from Chicago to Milwaukee, I would suggest that most interurbans connected two real cities with farm land in between. That is, interurbans did not serve a suburban-style route, where traffic thinned out as one left the big city. Nevertheless, as Media is a borough with a central business district, I'd call the Media line an interurban. A few years ago, I coaxed my wife to board the Badener Bahn (Wiener Lokalbahn) for the 20-mile run to the spa town of Baden, Austria. The car was a spotless version of a Liberty Bell Limited, and the street running through Vienna districts somewhat resembled the Liberty Bell leaving Norristown. The line is shorter than the Lehigh Valley Transit was, but the rural nature resembled much of the Pennsylvania countryside.
Link: http://www.trampicturebook.de/tram/euro ... en/wlb.htm

If we apply the definition posted earlier ( which comes from a long time traction "expert" Felix Reifschneider), the only one of the former Red Arrow rail lines which would qualify for interurban status would have been the original West Chester line. The other three lines were not long enough. However, the length factor is the only factor which these lines lack(ed) because in construction and features, they far exceeded that of many "true" interurbans.