Chicago-New York Electric Air Line Rail Road

05/14/2025

05/14/2025

The public was in a receptive mood for the Chicago-New York Air Line Railroad.
Alexander C. Miller headed the new company. More than six feet tall, he was heavily built, wore a black felt hat, and smoked fat ci**rs. He was suave and genial in manner - just the kind of front man the promoters needed to inspire confidence. He had a good railroad background, too. As a boy he'd gone braking on the Lake Shore linè, later becoming a telegraph operator on other roads, and then a train dispatcher, and still later chief dispatcher on the Burlington at Aurora, III.
On September 1, 1906, a crowd congregated three miles south of La Porte, Ind., for the official groundbreaking ceremony. Mr. Miller did the honors with a silver spade. People cheered; a brass band played. Then a gang of laborers started to dig in earnest.

The new railroad was beginning to shape up. But slowly. Red tape, winter, and frozen ground delayed the progress. Not until May 1, 1907, did we complete the first stretch of track - a three-mile spur from the groundbreaking scene on the main line to the city of La Porte. The stockholders grinned with joy. Prosperity seemed so very near.

Special trains loaded with stockholders and prospective investors ran from Chicago almost daily. All persons who came along to inspect the new railroad were given free lunches - the only dividend they received from their investment. Meanwhile, a monthly publication known as Air Line News was launched under the editorship of Charles P. Burton to keep up popular enthusiasm with news items, photographs, and maps.

Each step in the progress of building this remarkable railroad was dramatized and triumphantly reported. Stockholders proudly showed the magazine to their friends. The fever spread, money poured in, and the construction work pushed merrily on. Those stockholders were dancing on the edge of a precipice but they didn't know, until it was too late to pull out.

Perhaps the most colorful character in the whole Air Line melodrama was Colonel U. P. Hord. With a broad-brimmed hat, a tight waisted coat, an Ascot tie, and an impeccable white vest spanned by a massive gold watch chain, the Colonel cut an aristocratic figure. His was the task of acquiring for the railroad as much right-of-way as possible for as little cash as necessary. This called for diplomacy.

Probably no right-of-way agent ever undertook a more difficult task, for in the usual process of laying out a railroad, alternate routes are traced on the map and each property-holder is cleverly led into low-bidding against his neighbor in the effort to induce the railroad to select the line through his property. The result is that the railroad benefits from the downward sliding property prices. But not so with the Air Line venture. This was a road with a definitely pre-established course, advertised to be built in a straight line.

But Colonel Hord's affable and winning personality, his convincing oratory and his affluent glow, impressed the owners of farmland to such an extent that many of them surrendered options on their property in exchange for Air Line stock.

At the time of the groundbreaking, the stock was selling for about $40 a share, with a "real value" of $100, which the Air Line guaranteed would be paid to any stockholder who wanted his money as soon as the line reached Gary, Ind. In another two months it sold at $51.

BY THE FALL of 1907 our equipment consisted of 60 mule teams purchased in St. Louis for $22,000 (later sold for $11,000), 42 wheelers, three locomotives with flatcars and self-dumping dirt cars, a Vulcan 24-yard shovel, a steam grader, a warehouse with $10,000 worth of supplies, a powerhouse, a three-car barn complete, and two $11,000 electric passenger cars, built at Niles, Ohio, to carry stockholders over the line free.

The passenger cars, delivered in May, 1907, were big, smart-looking, green, interurban types built to order by the Niles Car Works. They were 50-foot combination baggage-passenger coaches, with steam-type roofs, sturdy wooden pilots, and windows grouped in pairs with stained-glass arches above. Each was equipped with four 75-hp. Westinghouse motors and control equipment, air brakes, and trolley
poles. "These cars are suitable for local service over the first 100-mile division," President Miller announced.
(Blake Mapledoram, Chief Engineer)

03/31/2025

The scene is at a spot on the projected route of the mainline, a few miles south of La Porte, Indiana. The curtain rises, revealing a group of citizens gathered around a few central figures. A brass band is playing a lively tune. Presently one of the central figures holds up his hand for attention. The band stops playing, for it is Mayor Darrow of La Porte who now begins to speak. After delivering an inspiring address, he hands a silver spade to a tall figure in a large black felt hat. It is Alexander C. Miller, President of the newly formed Chicago-New York Electric Air Line Rail Road who accepts the spade and who proceeds to turn up some of the Indiana turf. The crowd cheers. A minister invokes God's blessing on the project as hats are removed, and then the band plays the Star Spangled Banner. This done, a gang of laborers falls to digging in earnest and as the dirt flies, the crowd proceeds to the Teegarden Hotel in La Porte where refreshments are served and more speeches are made. Charles H. Michaels, the genial proprietor, has bought one of the first blocks of stock. A large block has been purchased by F. Erxmeyer of Hoboken, N.J. and another by G. C. Goodrum of Fall River, Mass. News that ground has actually been broken and that construction has really been started is spread to prospective stockholders of this enterprise through the medium of a newborn publication called the "Air Line News" which, under the talented editorship of Charles P. Burton, continues monthly to keep them advised. By means of the printed word, photos and maps in this publication, the stockholders learn of the progress made in this unbelievable project and they receive words of cheer and encouragement from the editor, from President Miller of the Air Line, from President Price of the Co-Operative Construction Co., which has the contract to build the line, and from Superintendent of Construction Blake A. Mapledoram. They read enthusiastic letters in its columns from fellow stockholders who have actually visited the property and have seen the work in progress. They read with interest the question-and-answer column in which inquiring investors are informed as to various details. They read announcements that a trainload of steel rails has just arrived and has been unloaded and that a concrete mixer has been purchased and is already turning out material for the abutments of the big bridge which is to carry the line over the Pere Marquette Railroad. They learn that the steel girders for this big bridge and for the next one over the Monon R.R. have been delivered, that a switch has been installed on the Pere Marquette R.R. with a siding for the Air Line's own material yard, and that a construction train consisting of a steam locomotive and a string of automatic dump-cars has arrived on this track in company with a huge Vulcan Steamshovel which is already on the job, taking big bites out of hills that stand in the path of the straight and level speedway that is to be the Air Line.

Each step in the process of building this remarkable railroad is dramatized and is triumphantly reported. And each stockholder proudly displays this evidence of progress to his friends, for this is HIS railroad that HE is building. And his friends catch some of his enthusiasm, and become fascinated in turn, and clip out application coupons from the back pages and send in remittances for some of the Air Line stock. The fever spreads, the money pours in, and construction work goes merrily forward.

Who was this man Miller, who conceived such a fantastic idea? Was he a promoter by profession, an experienced financier, a rich man?

03/13/2025

For seven years Burton devised ways to satisfy the impatient stockholders through the columns of the Air Line News, even publishing letters of criticism but, along with them, letters of endorsement. Thus he masterfully allowed the members of the Air Line family to answer each other when the controversy waxed warm over why the venture was not paying. One could not read the products of his pen without being thoroughly convinced of the sincerity, integrity and untiring efforts of Burton and his associates in their attempt to accomplish the all-important objective, that of putting the project on a paying basis. These men could have quit at any time, thereby allowing the stockholders to lose their investments outright without similarly sacrificing money of their own. That they stuck to the fight for seven years and finally brought the undertaking through to the status of a profitable business is now a matter of history. But it must have been difficult, embarrassing and irksome, to say the least, to make explanations and try to pacify 10,000 or more dissatisfied and impatient investors in the meantime. However, not one word of annoyance issued from Burton's editorial desk, only cheerful, courteous, convincing encouragement. His the credit then, as much as anyone's, for what was finally accomplished.

On February 8th, 1907, Blake A. Mapledoram joined the Air Line forces as Chief Engineer in charge of construction. He was then 45 years of age, with a creditable background of much electric railway building and operating experience of which his preference was the former. After graduating from a four-year academic course in a New York state school studying higher mathematics, engineering and the sciences, he went to work for the Cambria Iron & Steel Co. at Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Four years later he was helping build the mills for the newly-founded Loraine Steel Company at Johnstown. By 1896 he was building new lines for the Consolidated Traction Company properties at Pittsburgh or converting their original lines from cable operation to electric power. From 1899 to 1902 he built and operated interurban lines for the Suburban Rapid Transit Company of Pittsburgh.

Subsequently the Boston engineering firm of Blood & Hale engaged Mapledoram and he was sent to Moline, Illinois, where he built and equipped lines of the Mississippi Valley Traction Company. From there he went to Fort Worth, Texas, where he became Vice-President and General Manager of the Northern Texas Traction Company for the Bishop-Sherwin syndicate of Cleveland, Ohio where he undertook an entire rebuilding of that poorly-constructed property. Later, Mapledoram went to Memphis, Tennessee for engineers Ford, Bacon & Davis of New York City, then took charge of construction of the Memphis City Railway System comprising about a hundred miles of line.

In answering the call to the Air Line undertaking, he sent for the key men of his Memphis organization who joined him at La Porte, Indiana. His first orders issued on the Air Line job were "Construct the best railroad the world has ever seen, connecting Chicago with New York in as straight a line as it is practical to build; eliminate all grade crossings and sharp curves, and keep under a maximum gradient of five-tenths of one per cent, adding that the promoters of the road were not looking at the initial cost but at the operating problems that come after the construction men are gone.

Mapledoram himself was gone within the first two years of the struggle.