The traction systems throughout all New England have not been immune from the difficulties that have beset their brethren in other sections of the land. In fact I should not hesitate to say that their troubles have been greater rather than less than their brethren’s. More traction mileage has probably been abandoned in New England than in any other distinctive single locality. From Plymouth to Sagamore, Massachusetts, there stretch twenty miles of track and trolley-wire which, like the Hampden railroad (once built by one Charles S. Mellen for a dozen miles east of Springfield), never has been used and probably never will be. Two years ago the Bay State’s lines in and around Gloucester and the Cape Ann district were all abandoned, while the Connecticut Co. (a New Haven property) constantly threatened to do the same thing in some of its larger cities if jitney competition were not withdrawn. A prompt compliance by the local authorities with this mandate saved these towns their trolley service, temporarily at least. It is a grave question whether fifteen years hence we shall have any trolley service in most of our American towns of less than 100,000 population. But the most important abandonment of long-distance trolley service which has come to my attention has been that of the Shore Line Electric, along the north shore of Long Island Sound, for sixty miles between New Haven and New London.
There have been serious deletions in the passenger transportation machine of New England. The causes that have led to them are many and too involved to be discussed here. The main fact is that virtually none of this trolley mileage, outside of the city systems, is ever likely to come back into use again. A good deal of it should not have been built but, having been built, has become both a convenience and a necessity to the territory which it served and its abandonment a distinct social and commercial blow to that territory.
It so happens too that there is a vast amount of surplus mileage in the form of branch lines and even of some of the secondary main lines upon the steam railroads of New England. And some of this in turn became unprofitable only when it was paralleled by a trolley-line, which quickly changed the situation from one wherein a territory sustained a single thriftily operated line to one where two hotly competing lines could hardly fail both to lose. Now the opportunity is beginning to show itself for a change toward old conditions.
It ought to be and is possible for the New Haven, the Boston and Maine, and some of the other railroads of New England to transform some of their secondary lines into inexpensive combined freight and passenger roads, using steam, if need be, for their freight service and electricity for their passenger.
What I meant for the New Haven, as well as the other New England roads, was the same sort of simple installation that was operated for many years, and apparently operated successfully, on some of the suburban lines east of Hartford, between Middletown and Berlin Junction, Connecticut, between Providence, Warren, and Fall River, and in the summer months out to Nantasket Beach beyond Boston. I meant cars of comparatively small size and weight and self-propelled, depending upon no locomotive whatever. This field south of Boston, where the New Haven’s suburban service is at its very worst, is ripe for installation of that sort, through as far as Plymouth at least, and possibly to New Bedford, Newport, and Providence as well.
To the Boston and Maine the zone of suburban lines of the one-time Eastern railroad from North Station out to Salem, Gloucester, and up to Newburyport and Portsmouth offers similar immediate opportunity. Here are lines on which a minimum of through traffic is being routed to-day and most of that could, if necessary, be taken off and placed on the more direct main lines of the original Boston and Maine, just to the west, and leading direct through to Portland and the north. They thread the territory where the interurban lines are dying most rapidly and being totally abandoned, and where a great public inconvenience is arising as a result.
A further result, and one not to be underestimated, would be the vast saving in the capacity of the North Station, just as the New Haven and the Boston and Albany can make a similar vast saving in South Station. A regular interval service, increased during rush-hours, of multiple-unit cars means no switching service whatsoever. An incoming train discharges its passengers upon one side and receives others for the outgoing run on the other side, while it stands upon a single pair of rails and without an unnecessary movement of any sort, which means, in effect, the virtual doubling of a station’s capacity.
The New England lines are this very day short—wofully short—of steam locomotives. Yet the immediate installation of electric overhead wires upon some of their congested branches would within a short space of time release dozens of locomotives which, if not efficient for the movement of long or heavy freights, could move shorter ones; after which could come the heavier installations.
“All right say for Berkshire County, Massachusetts,” you interrupt, “but how about the southeastern corner of New England? Haven’t the rivers down there in Rhode Island all the load they can carry?”
Granted. I indulge in no such wild day-dreams as that of all the railroad trackage of southern New England being operated by water-generated electric power. There is a better plan in view. Before me lies the rough prospectus of the super-power plan of the Northeast Atlantic seaboard, for the surveys of which Congress has already made generous appropriations. In a word this plan provides that in a great congested industrial area consisting of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, southeastern New York, eastern Pennsylvania, and portions of New Jersey and of Maryland a present consumption of 17,000,000 horse-power—divided into 10,000,000 for industrial purposes and 7,000,000 for railroad—shall be fully met by the consolidation and connection, through high-voltage transmission lines, of existing steam-electric stations as well as by the establishment of central power-plants at the mine-heads of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, these last with a capacity of but 5,500,000 horse-power and yet helping to meet the present need for 17,000,000.