Chicago-New York Electric Air Line Railroad
The Chicago-New York Electric Air Line Railroad proposed in 1905 to build a beeline-straight electric railroad 743 miles long between Chicago and New York. The trip over the completed line was projected to take ten hours. (For comparison, the 20th Century Limited when inaugurated in 1902 took twenty hours to make the trip over an 800 mile route, and 15.5 hours in later years; while as of 2005 the highway trip takes 12.1 hours over a 787 mile route.)
The project was trumpeted nationally, stock sold with great rapidity, sections of track and immense cuts-and-fills were built in the vicinity of Gary, Indiana and operated as interurban transit, and investors were taken out to view these portions of the line in operation. The depression of 1907-1908, the immense expenses occasioned by the incredibly stringent engineering specifications, and some claimed accounting irregularities and other fraud, led to the failure of the main line to expand beyond several dozen miles through the Indiana countryside. The largest completed was a 19.2 mile segment between LaPorte and Goodrum, Indiana. The completed portions became the foundation of Gary Railways, a successful interurban street railway system.
Sections of the right-of-way and some of the colossal concrete bridge supports are still visible to this day.
