Originally Posted by
Doohickie
They had interurban service between Dallas, Fort Worth, and outlying cities. Apparently what really killed the Fort Worth portion was anti-trust laws that prevented the electricity generating companies from owning and operating electrically driven trains. Not long after the power companies divested their train operations, the train companies failed. Apparently it was a small incremental cost to a power company to maintain rail lines along with the power lines (which ran in the same easements), but for a rail-only company it was too much overhead to take care of the rails.
Here in Michigan the interurban train companies weren't clearly owned by the power companies, but there was some kind of connection between them. This was evidently quite convvoluted, since the presenter wasn't sure what the connection between interurbans and power companies was even after years of studying this. A lot of money went into building these lines, and the power companies may have been silent investors.
Your comment about anti-trust laws was interesting. This was an era when government tried to regulate monopolies like the interurban rail companies. I wonder how they would fare in our own era of deregulation and laissez-faire capitalism.
The interurban companies did use their own independant power source. It was generated by hydroelectic dams in the northern part of the state. This is one very appealing fact about interurbans, IMO.