RESTORING THE INDIANA INTERURBAN.

Wouldn't it be useful, if you were going to bring your bicycle on the train, to have a baggage car to carry it?  The North Shore Line and South Shore Line, years ago, would marshal a combination car (in the case of the South Shore, sometimes more than one) in a train of interurbans.

The more common practice was to run a single car with a baggage compartment, and there might be cut flowers, frozen fish, a crate of chickens, or a few cans of milk in it.  In Indiana, steel cars were ubiquitous toward the end.  A very few survived the end of interurban service, other than on the South Shore, as construction offices or lake refuges.

Now, Union Traction 429, formerly a construction office, is back on wheels and under power.

A century ago, Indiana’s high-speed, interurban, electric trains empowered Hoosiers to pursue an education, expand economic opportunity, visit loved ones, quickly ship perishable goods, and electrify rural communities. Now, No. 429 and the Hoosier Heartland Trolley Co. are poised to reprise that role in a historic sense. The company is working to develop a working interurban line interpreting life during the interurban heyday.

Hoosier Heartland have at least one more steel combine under restoration.  They've documented the restoration of 429.

The group have acquired components to build an electrically operated preservation area somewhere in Indiana.  Preservation railway season has mostly wound down for the year, apart from the seasonal trains for Hallowe'en and Christmas; preservation work goes on year round, and financial assistance from armchair ferroequinologists is always welcome.