Ferndale in 5-10 years

[Johnlodge]

The stability of Ferndale, and the sense of "normality" is why I moved here. Good city services, good police department, etc. People walk around all over the place. No need to have a car for local needs. Grocery stores, dollar store, proximity to Woodward for bus, if you want it. I've lived here since '04 & so far, I'm very satisfied.

Same here. I do all my grocery shopping by bicycle. You get some urban [[lite) experience, while at the same time having a small town vibe. A lot of my friends live here too, so every time I take a walk or bike ride, I'm bound to run into somebody. I find it a very enjoyable quality of life. Sitting out on a patio downtown with a beer and people watching is a great way to spend some time, there are so many different types of people, you never know what you'll see. And people seem to have a lot of pride in living here, which is great.

Quick plug for a project one Ferndalien has been working on:

www.ferndale115.com

Aesthetically, could use some work, but content-wise... pretty much everything you need to know on what's going on around town.

[Detroitnerd]

Remember that the DUR needed a separate "charter" for each town through which it ran.

Much the same way we ask utilities to maintain their poles and right of way, I imagine. But don't forget, these original horsecar lines were very small when the original leases were signed by the companies, and they were with Detroit, because it was the only town. The DUR bought out all those companies and began embarking on its own agreements with other communities, and I know little about those.

In many cases the charter required the DUR [[or predecessor lines) to perform certain chores for the city/town/village/wide spot in the road. These often included street sprinkling [[for dirt streets) or paving the street for a certain distance on each side of the tracks. The charter also specified fares in many instances. It was the city's refusal to allow increases in streetcar fares despite the surge in material and labor costs following WW One that was the "hammer" which allowed the city to purchase the city streetcar lines for about one-third of their value. Shortly after taking over, the city promptly raised the fares.

Yes, that's true. I believe Detroit's did keep streetcar fares competitive through the 1920s and 1930s [[that was the point of that 1930s propaganda film promoting the DSR, "Getting about"), but under the leadership of Fred Nolan, the streetcar system didn't see capital reinvested in rail, as Nolan was determined to convert the system to all-bus. Luckily, the transportation demands of the Second World War gave the streetcar a brief second life.

The finances of interurbans in the US was pretty heavily covered by Hilton and Due in their scholarly book. In 1924, the industry ROR on investment was 2.2% while the DUR [[interurban only) was only 1.3% in that year. costs per "car-mile" for the interurban industry were 12 cents in 1902 and 35 cents in 1924 [[DUR costs in 1924 were 42 cents per car-mile).

Yes, Hermod, I see your point. Costs were rising. But I still must say that the seeds of the interurban's doom were really sown earlier, around 1909. Actually, last year was an anniversary of sorts, right? The first mile of concrete road in Detroit? Road-building became America's biggest business in the 1910s, and car production took off in 1915, with the millionth Ford. Yes, the war drove up materials costs, but so did car production. No product in the history of the Western world demanded more steel, glass, copper, wood, effectively driving demand for the very materials the streetcars needed for their operations. All of this is part of my thesis, which is that government subsidies cut into these companies' profitability, and, now that you mention it, those subsidies likely drove the car companies to demand more raw materials, which in turn stuck it to the traction concerns in the form of increased costs.

Lots of shenanigans and money made by "railroad promoters" and "interurban promoters" both through land speculation and dummy construction companies that cheated the original investors out of their railroad.

Agreed. One of the best books about those dummy companies and speculative privateering is "The Robber Barons" by Matthew Josephson.

Politicians [[and newpapers) loved to campaign against eeeeevullll monopolies like street cars, interurbans, railroads, electric companies, water companies, etc. Every time the price of gas goes up, the pols want to "nationalize the oil companies".

We probably should nationalize the energy sector. Instead of their corrupt executives buying our politicians, the public could buy their stock and fire their corrupt executives.

When Hazen Pingree was governor, his actions against the steam railroads contributed to the state of Michigan having the largest percentage of any state of having its steam railroad net abandoned in the decades 1910-1919, 1920-1929, 1930-1939, and 1940-1949.

Really? In polls of U.S. historians, year after year, Pingree winds up being voted among the top ten municipal leaders in U.S. history. Kind of odd to see him described as anti-business, especially since he was a business magnate. But you're saying he contributed to the decline of steam railroads statewide starting nine years after his death and continuing for 48 years after his death? That seems far-fetched.

Whatever his contribution to the decline of steam lines, we must remember that the other factors were much more dramatic. In the period 1900-1949, we lost hundreds of towns in the state of Michigan, as industry centralized into a few major cities. Around 1900, every town of any importance had a few mills, a few factories, connected by rail. By 1945, we'd lost so many of those towns, as people migrated to big cities like Detroit. [[My grandfather, for instance, in 1915.) But there were lots of factors. The state had been logged over, and nobody needed tortuous Shea lines into the hills. Demographically, small towns were dying. [[A popular song of the day went, "How you gonna keep em down on the farm after they've seen Pah-ree?") Industrially, the profit center went from moving goods over long distances to "value-added" transport of parts and fuel between industrial powerhouses. Why bring old Ping into all this? There would seem to be too much noise to categorically say he was a major factor in all this.

As usual, enjoying the debate.

[Hermod]

Shea lines

Shay [[FIFY)

The Shay locomotive was just one of the low-speed geared locomotives built to operate on rough track for the extraction industries.

In addition to the Shay, these rails also used the Heisler and the Climax locomotives.


The Shay
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3173/...0ff25bc392.jpg

The Climax
http://www.whitemountaincentralrr.co...2007%20028.jpg

The Heisler
http://www.svry.com/images/heisler_3.jpg

[Detroitnerd]

Shay [[FIFY)

The Shay locomotive was just one of the low-speed geared locomotives built to operate on rough track for the extraction industries.

In addition to the Shay, these rails also used the Heisler and the Climax locomotives.


The Shay
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3173/...0ff25bc392.jpg

The Climax
http://www.whitemountaincentralrr.co...2007%20028.jpg

The Heisler
http://www.svry.com/images/heisler_3.jpg

Thanks for the correction and additional info. I think I've played too much Railroad Tycoon, given its overemphasis on the Shay model. Nice to know the bigger picture.

About five years ago, while on a trip to California, I had the pleasure of riding a Shay-drawn train up the mountains around Santa Cruz to a redwood preserve. It pulled us up partway, then backed us up a switchback, then pulled us out of another switchback. They had converted it to oil, but the rest of the experience felt pretty darn authentic. These low-gear, shifting truck locos are likely what the Detroitnerd family helped load up with old-growth wood when they were logging over the Mitten in the 1800s. Grandpa Detroitnerd used to laugh about being kids and putting lard or grease on the rail lines around an incline to make the loco's wheels spin while they hid in the bushes.

[Hermod]

Really? In polls of U.S. historians, year after year, Pingree winds up being voted among the top ten municipal leaders in U.S. history. Kind of odd to see him described as anti-business, especially since he was a business magnate. But you're saying he contributed to the decline of steam railroads statewide starting nine years after his death and continuing for 48 years after his death? That seems far-fetched.

Pingree was a shoe manufacturer and made his money in the shoe business. As mayor, he was in a constant battle against the gas company, the electric company, and the horse car lines [[and later the street cars). As governor, he took out after the railroads. The railroads were charged a tax on their gross reciepts per mile of track. This was on a sliding scale so that marginal rail lines paid a low percentage of their gross receipts while heavily used lines paid a higher percentage. Pingree felt that the railroad "share" of state taxes had declined since the Civil War as other taxing sources came on line. He proposed the gross receipts tax be replaced by a property tax with the assessed value being the replacement value of the land, track, and sructures, He and his successor got this enshrined into law and railroads paid five times the amount of tax in 1906 that they did in 1896. The gross receipts tax was to a large degree based on ability to pay with marginal lines paying little tax. The replacement value assessment hit marginal lines the worst and contributed to the steady decline of rail lines in Michigan.

[Detroitnerd]

Pingree was a shoe manufacturer and made his money in the shoe business. As mayor, he was in a constant battle against the gas company, the electric company, and the horse car lines [[and later the street cars). As governor, he took out after the railroads. The railroads were charged a tax on their gross reciepts per mile of track. This was on a sliding scale so that marginal rail lines paid a low percentage of their gross receipts while heavily used lines paid a higher percentage. Pingree felt that the railroad "share" of state taxes had declined since the Civil War as other taxing sources came on line. He proposed the gross receipts tax be replaced by a property tax with the assessed value being the replacement value of the land, track, and sructures, He and his successor got this enshrined into law and railroads paid five times the amount of tax in 1906 that they did in 1896. The gross receipts tax was to a large degree based on ability to pay with marginal lines paying little tax. The replacement value assessment hit marginal lines the worst and contributed to the steady decline of rail lines in Michigan.

A fair case made for your point. Of course, the railroads really earned the blowback they got because of their ruthless practices during railroading's Golden Age.

[rb336]

You know, in the year 2015, we'll all be on speed-dial. You'll just have to think of a person, they'll be talking to you.

Yikes! imagine if you are having an "intimate" moment and one of you happens to think of an ex....