PROGRESS OF A CENTURY. The Chicago and Milwaukee Electric Railway commenced scheduled service from Evanston to Milwaukee in October 1908. The issue of Central Electric Railfans' Association Bulletin 141, Before the North Shore Line, may or may not have been timed with that centennial in mind. (The association has worked off much of its backlog of bulletins, which are a membership benefit, within the last year.) I'm going to bend my rule on book reviews and use this bulletin as material for Book Review N^o. 42, as it presents substantial new research from trade sources and the historical context is instructive. The railroad began as Waukegan's Bluff City Electric Street Railway in 1894, and by 1898 it reincorporated as the Chicago and Milwaukee Electric Railway, building south through North Chicago into Glencoe and on to Evanston by the turn of the century, then, as the Chicago and Milwaukee Electric Railroad, building west to Libertyville and Mundelein, and then north to the state line, where a Wisconsin company built to Milwaukee.

That related Wisconsin company and the financial shenanigans that accompanied the building of the line to Milwaukee are relevant today. The history, at page 107, is straightforward.

In 1907, a financial panic took place across the United States brought on by questionable banking practices. Bank credit all but disappeared and the C&ME soon found itself unable to meet its financial obligations.

Electric interurban railroads, which promised more frequent, cleaner, cheaper passenger service, were the dot.com phenomenon of that era. The passage blaming the panic on banking practices is incomplete, as a paragraph on page 112 indicates.

Soon it was discovered that the accounts of the Illinois and Wisconsin properties were so intermingled, it could not be determined which C&ME entity had paid for construction material either with actual funds or credit. Of the construction material on the property, it was nearly impossible to determine which of the C&ME companies (or Republic Construction) owned the goods and, therefore, where it could be used. Furthermore, declared the creditors, C&ME contracts with [interurban promoter A.C.] Frost's Republic Construction Company were too broadly written and lacked specificity. As of February 1, 1908, Republic had received payment totaling $2,400,000 par value in capital stock and $10,300,000 par value in bonds issued by the Illinois and Wisconsin Divisions.

There are other references through the book of commingled funds, with proceeds from bonds issued by one of the Illinois or Wisconsin companies used to pay for work on the other company's projects. Bondholders, however, might have been so delighted to have a piece of the action in The Next Big Thing that the niceties of accounting didn't matter too much. There was so much upside potential. Those who do not remember the past ...

The bank panic exposed the weaknesses of many of the interurbans, and by 1917, abandonments of weak properties were common. Chicago and Milwaukee Electric did finish its line into Milwaukee, and the book presents many instructive pictures of the straight and nearly level line as it was built, with one track and room for the second, as well as illustrations of the timber trestles south of Milwaukee that were much later filled in to create the massive earthwork that still parallels the east side of First Avenue, now South Sixth Street. Readers also learn that the first 15 steel interurban cars, three of which are in preservation, were purchased because carbuilders and the company's receiver were confident of new management, in the form of Samuel Insull's United Utilities, that had the means to pay for the cars as well as to obtain a Chicago entry on the Northwestern Elevated and perhaps to develop the passenger base in the northern suburbs. That's the sequel.

Thus endeth the history lesson. It's a railroad book. Now comes the rivet-counting. The book follows the traditional Bulletin form including maps, rosters, and technical details of the rolling stock. Several of the maps are recycled from earlier Bulletins. The new maps are in a less readable format, and there are proofreading errors, most distractingly, Wahington Street in Waukegan. The rolling stock section repeats a great deal of material from Bulletin 106, Interurban to Milwaukee (there's at least one available for a good price) that is long out of print. Older ferroequinologists will have this one in their collections. Younger ferroequinologists will have to locate one to flesh out some of the details, and discover some dimensional drawings of the rolling stock, necessary for modeling purposes. Bulletin 141 mostly reproduces the Cordell Rolling Stock profile diagrams, which provide salient data in a consistent form, but without the dimensional drawings.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)