Hoosier Heartland Trolley Company and Headwaters Junction, Inc. announced today their intent to operate one of the Company’s historic interurbans, No. 429, as a part of Headwaters Junction’s growing fleet of attractions. The 429 once frequented Fort Wayne in the 1920s and 30s, shuttling passengers throughout the state in the era before the highway system.
With the interurban system dissolving in 1941 and streetcar systems converting to buses in the 1950s, many alive today do not remember nor even know the state had one of the world’s greatest transportation networks. In the 1920s, the electric railway system peaked with more than 15,000 operating trolleys and more than 2 million passengers in a year. Cars would depart the traction terminal in Indianapolis (trolley station) nearly every minute for destinations across the state, once passing the steps of the Indiana Statehouse. With the conclusion of the Golden Age of railroading in America, began the railway preservation movement.
