The Hoosier Heartland Trolley Company is excited to announce that Electrify 429 has received a $3,000 grant from Tom E. Dailey Foundation. Electrify 429 is a capital campaign for the operational restoration of one of Indiana’s last interurbans – an intercity electric railway car. This grant will be applied towards the cosmetic restoration of the car’s smoking section as phase one of a four-phase restoration plan, which is already underway at a private facility near Indianapolis.
From president Austin Mace and the Board of Directors. 2019 was a banner year for the Hoosier Heartland Trolley Company, with a number of projects starting throughout the organization and taking shape. As year-end approaches, please consider a tax-deductible donation to our Electrify 429 campaign or general fund.
It’s hard to believe that already one year has gone by since the founding of our organization. As a quick introduction, my name is Austin Mace and I am the current president of the Hoosier Heartland Trolley Company (HHTC). I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight what we’ve accomplished in the past 365 days, where we’re going next and how we got here in the first place.
Electricity – the invention that defined the beginning of the 20th century. Indianapolis’ streetcar system adopted the technology in the 1890s – ushering in the new century with it. Beginning in 1864, transportation in Indianapolis was provided by horse or mule-drawn carriages on rails through the street. By 1890, Citizens Street Railroad Company, the dominant streetcar company in the city, was operating 260 cars with some 1100 horses and mules. The inefficiency ultimately proved to be problematic for the City of Indianapolis.
Leslie Haines was born in 1883 in rural Hamilton County, Ind. at Carmel, which numbered less than 400 residents at the time. Following his dream, Haines enlisted in 1906 and circumnavigated the globe in Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet, training under Dr. Lee DeForest, a leader in the development of wireless technology. Meanwhile, the Union Traction Company of Indiana had set up shop in Carmel, allowing Carmel residents and storeowners to tap into a valuable new asset: electricity.
A group of historic preservationists is pleased to announce the formation of the Hoosier Heartland Trolley Co. The group is a forming nonprofit preservation organization dedicated to the interpretation, preservation, and operation of historic railroad artifacts significant to Indiana’s rich, yet mostly forgotten electric railway history.
