As they rounded the tree-lined curve Boyd could see past the car and up the track -- another interurban car was coming the other way. He told The Star afterwards he kept expecting one of the cars to turn into a switch. He was way in the back of the car and the crews were up front. Surely, he told himself, they had the situation under control. But the interurbans kept coming towards each other and no one seemed to see it but Boyd.
He jumped off just before the cars collided. The other car had been empty except for its crew, so it weighed less, and on impact it rode up over the heavier car, ripping the top off of it and pushing through metal, wood and bodies until it finally stopped. Boyd told his story at length in the next morning's Indianapolis Star evidently in writing because the quotes are lengthy and in the florid writing style of the day. There was a period of appalling stillness and then the shrieks and groans of the wounded and dying rose upon the air.
Boyd was one of only a handful of survivors out of perhaps 50 or 55 people aboard the two cars. Another survivor was E. Spiller, of Bluffton, who had been the conductor of the northbound car. He knew that the Indianapolis Limited would be coming up the same tracks, and soon. Though injured, Spiller ran back down the tracks and flagged down the oncoming car, which had been bearing down on the accident scene at top speed.
In aftermath of the crash an investigation attributed the cause to human error and miscommunication. There were extra cars sharing the track that day to handle the number of passengers going to the fair. The dispatcher's job was to keep track of where each car was and give each car instructions on when to duck into a siding to let another past. But he couldn't communicate with the cars while they were in motion and crews sometimes pushed to make it to the next stopping point in order to keep their schedules.
The worst Interurban crash in Indianapolis occurred on Oct. Twenty people were killed or mortally wounded, all of them members of same social club. About 65 grotto members had gathered about 8 p. There, they boarded a big trailer pulled by a truck driven by grotto member Harry Stewart who was going to tow the trailer to a barn on Pendleton Pike near Fort Benjamin Harrison where an orchestra was already setting up for the dance.
Stewart drove up Emerson Avenue in the dark and up around 23rd Street he suddenly felt the trailer give way behind him with a crash. He later said he didn't know his truck had just cleared the railroad tracks, and he didn't see or hear the interurban streetcar bearing down on them from the east. It may have been going as fast as 70 mph when it struck the trailer, and whether it had lights or sounded its horn was a matter of dispute afterward. Sixteen of the 65 passengers on the trailer were killed on impact or died that night.
Four others would die from their injuries in the coming days. Only five passengers were aboard the interurban car, none of them seriously injured. Both of these locations were on the city limits.
Indianapolis, until Unigov in , tended to annex county territory in a very strange pattern. It never really gobbled up territory in any kind of straight forward fashion. This location was just outside the former town of Irvington. There was branch from this line at Dunreith that connected to New Castle. Most stops along the Interurban lines were named after the road where it was located.
Stop 16 on this line, at milepost In an effort to not have confusion between the names Franke Road and Franklin Road originally the Franklin-Noblesville State Road, mentioned here , the road at Stop 16 was changed to the Interurban stop name. It was named after the landmark at that location: German Church. It should also be noted that this line had a branch leaving Lebanon headed to Crawfordsville. They were at Mount Jackson, milepost 3. The official Stop 1 was at milepost 4.
The first numbered stop along this track was Stop 5, at Speedway. The city limits, at the time, was at Olen Avenue, officially known as Stop 4. No stop numbers were used on time tables, but the first stop listed was at 34th Street, milepost 4. It should be noted that the UTC had a line connecting Muncie and Indianapolis, and was labeled as such. Due to this, the first stop out of Indianapolis was at the end of the city street car trackage at 25th Street, milepost This line served Fort Benjamin Harrison, and the station there at milepost Good food, by the way.
This line has four points that I have found interesting. First, this was both the first and last active interurban line into Indianapolis more information here. Second, some of the stops along this route are still named as such. Greenwood has a Stop 18 Road. Third, remnants of this company still exist as part of Duke Energy. When the Federal Government ordered the separation of the electric traction roads and their electrical supplier part of what kept these lines solvent was selling power to customers along the line , the electric company Public Service Indiana was created.
And fourth, Stop 13 is the county line separating Marion and Johnson Counties. In newspapers of the time, a large picnic grounds and recreational area existed between Stops 13 and Stop 14 is now called Frye Road. However, the second stop was just east of Emerson Avenue. After that, at milepost 7. At the height of the Interurban era, there were 55 different lines in Indiana. I plan to cover them in more detail at a later date.
View all posts by Richard M. Simpson, III. You have made some really good points there.
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