Unbridled Optimism - About the Lake Erie Bowling Green & Napoleon

Unbrided Optimism

- About the Lake Erie Bowling Green & Napoleon

by Art Peterson

All photos are from the Krambles-Peterson Archive

The first building boom for interurbans occurred in the period between 1901 and 1904. Easing of the money markets around the turn of the century (no less than two dozen bankers/brokers/investment houses were advertising for electric railway business in the 1899 edition of the “American Street Railway Investments” publication) allowed several interurban projects to move into construction.  As Hilton & Due noted, this era was characterized by a frequent tendency to overstate earnings potential. Tightening of credit following the “rich man’s panic” of 1903 (the Dow had dropped 46% by November 9, 1903) accounts for the end of that first boom.  

No less than 1,521 miles of new interurban line were constructed and began operation during 1903 (total mileage for that first building boom was 5,706).  One of the lines included in that total was the Lake Erie Bowling Green & Napoleon (LEBG&N) in Ohio, promoted by several residents of Bowling Green. Their ultimate dream was to build a 65-mile line from Port Clinton to Napoleon, Ohio. Wood County granted the first franchise for this line on September 14, 1901. By early November, work on the line between Bowling Green and Pemberville was underway.

After a decade of construction, they would build less than half the proposed mileage. More significantly, their chosen route had some serious competition, with three companies proposing to build along this general route. Another concerning factor was that on the portion they did build, there was only one town of any size – Bowling Green boasted 5,067 residents in 1900 and would grow by 3% by 1910.  The other on-line towns were significantly smaller (example – Pemberville with 1,081 residents in 1900) and all lost population in the period 1900-1910.

If you look at CERA Bulletin 96 on Ohio, the page on the LEBG&N notes the road to have been “one of Ohio’s smallest and weakest interurbans.”  The entry in Hilton & Due opens with the phrase “a major example of an ill-conceived” project.  With these stellar reviews, you might wonder “why consider the road at all?” Fair question, but despite its limitations, there are some decent photos of the road and even in its short (15-year) life, it managed to have an interesting history. In addition, it can teach us some interesting lessons about “this thing of ours.”

In the context of 1901, the “Street Railway Journal” noted that “progressive farmers have special rooms set up for conferences with railway promoters.” As H. Roger Grant wrote in his 2016 book “Electric Railways and the American People,” farmers were frequently avid supporters of the interurbans. Access to the new services meant that bad roads no longer had to cut them off from nearby towns. These lines also increased the mobility of the labor force, meaning that workers could get to a farm to provide the needed work. Still, there were some over-optimistic accounts; a 1907 article mentioned the certainty of financial gain by linking two cities via a route that served good agricultural land in between. Certainly, the LEBG&N fits into the context of having met that “criteria” but failing to have a stable long-term earnings picture.

Not your typical Ohio interurban – LEBG&N car 100 had the honor of making the first revenue trip on the 11.5-mile section of line from Bowling Green to Pemberville on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 1902. Pemberville offered the possibility to connect with the Toledo Fostoria & Findlay. This was the only California-type car on the road’s roster, until being destroyed in an April 30, 1906, carbarn fire, which consumed all five LEBG&N passenger cars.  The trucks under this car look to be the Barney & Smith C type. 

The road next built east from Pemberville, heading for a connection with the Lake Shore Electric (LSE) in Woodville, six miles distant.  Grading on this section of line began in August 1904. However, the Pennsylvania Railroad stood in the way.  Ultimately, the LEBG&N would get its LSE connection, but it would take a federal court decision (rendered on August 25, 1905) to get the road the right to cross the PRR on a bridge to forge that connection. At this point, things weren’t looking so bad for the LEBG&N: it managed to post a profit of $51,000 for the year 1905.

Headline image: Typical of the four closed-body passenger cars on the LEBG&N is car 104, a 1903 Jewett, built to the firm’s Plan 112K design. Surviving Jewett records show that the LEBG&N paid $4,972 for this 45-foot combine.  Exterior colors were Pullman Green, while the interior was finished in Oak. Freight charges to deliver the car from the Newark, OH plant totaled $45. This photo was in Scotch Ridge, where Ohio Routes 105 and 199 meet. This location is about 3.5 miles (as the crow flies) south-southwest of Pemberville. Even today, this community consists of no more than a dozen or so structures, one of which is a converted church. The milk can at the car’s step reminds us of the importance the interurban represented for rural communities to quickly get perishables to urban customers. 

Here’s a mystery – this looks to be the same car 104 as in the previous image. The location is again Scotch Ridge, though looking the other direction from the previous image. You can see the shadows of the baggage door on the other side of the car (consistent with the previous photo). This car is riding on Peckham 36 MCB trucks, which were used by the THI&E and others in this era.  Where the mystery comes in is that car 104 was one of the five cars supposedly destroyed in the April 30, 1906 carbarn fire. No accounts indicate any of the original cars were rebuilt. Yet, if you look at the banner on the car side, it clearly advertises a July 1908 baseball game. (A word about the “Weiss All Stars” – Alta Weiss made her semi-pro debut as a pitcher with the Vermillion Independents on September 2, 1907. Known as the “Girl Wonder,” in 1908, her father bought a club, which he renamed the “Weiss All Stars.” They played throughout Kentucky and Ohio during 1908-09. This image reminds us of the difference that the interurbans made in providing rural residents access to leisure-time activities.)

The loss of the five cars in the carbarn fire meant that the LEBG&N had to turn to the Toledo Fostoria & Findlay (TF&F) to borrow a couple of cars to meet its schedule requirements.  The LEBG&N returned to Jewett for a pair of new cars, receiving these on June 23, 1906 (according to some accounts – seems very quick action considering the fire wasn’t until the last day of April 1906).

One of the 1906 Jewett-built cars is shown in this view looking west on Main Street, Woodville, from Bridge Street. The two-story building to the left of car 106 still stands in 2024. Those two cars that the LEBG&N received were part of a lot of 13 cars built for three customers. Jewett records note these cars as being 47’-8” combines. The contract price for these cars was $4,230.79, about 15% less than what was quoted for car 104 a few years previous. A look at how material prices behaved between 1903 and 1906 does not show a universally downward trend, leading to the conclusion that the volume order and the timing of that order allowed Jewett to offer the more-favorable pricing.

Around the same time as the LEBG&N was receiving cars 105 and 106 from Jewett, there was some interesting correspondence in the Jewett files showing what the car builder negotiated to pay for various components.  In a January 23, 1905, letter, Peckham quoted a price of $425 for one 14D5 maximum-traction truck, while 36 MCB trucks ranged between $625 and $950 each (depending on wheel and axle diameters). Germer Stone offered 11 variations of their “radiant” hot water heaters to the car company, with unit prices from $50 to $100. December 1905 correspondence from Christensen Air Brake noted the car builder received a 5% discount, while unit prices for equipment were between $300 and $360. Air whistles were available for $3 each.

The final extension of the LEBG&N was a six-mile one from Bowling Green to Tontonagy, which offered a connection to the Ohio Electric’s Lima-Toledo line. However, in this case the LEBG&N stopped short of the B&O tracks in town, so passengers wishing to ride the Ohio Electric made a walk over to that road’s station.  Cars on this line began running on August 13, 1908. This brought the road to 24.5 miles of track.

The world had changed for the LEBG&N and it was not kind to the traction line. Incurring a deficit of $11,021 in 1911, the road defaulted on a bill of $325, and was thrown into receivership. Receivers were appointed May 2, 1911, including AE Royce, who had been one of the original backers of the LEBG&N. A fundamental factor in the outlook for the LEBG&N and similar roads was that auto registration in Ohio had exploded in this era. Where just 1,390 autos were registered in the state in 1902, by 1911, there were now 44,240 registered autos – a 31.8-fold increase. By 1916 (see paragraph below for the significance of this date to the LEBG&N), auto registration had increased more than five-fold to 234,431 vehicles.

On August 6, 1916, the road was sold to the TF&F.  Cars 105 and 106 joined that road’s roster, trading their Pullman Green for a coat of TF&F maroon, and being renumbered to cars 24 and 25.  TF&F retained only the Pemberville-Bowling Green line segment, finally abandoning this on May 15, 1925.

Car 108 is shown taking layover at the LEBG&N Bowling Green station. These buildings still exist, with the old station being located at 131 W. Wooster. In addition to the traction line, the company had a power business as well as a hot water heating plant in Bowling Green. By 1911, these services were earning nearly $32,000 annually, against the railways’ earnings of $28,000. The utility services increased their earnings by 8% for 1912, while the railways’ earnings decreased 2% over that same period.

The Eastern Ohio Chapter of the NRHS published Joseph A. Galloway’s “Interurban Trails” (undated). That document included the following information for the LEBG&N – total cost to construct the 24.5 miles of road through June 30, 1914 was $530,689. In addition to the passenger car fleet, the road owned one baggage-express car, as well as 11 service/work cars. This is the only photo of the service/work cars to have surfaced. Many interurban companies turned to AC&F, Haskell & Barker, or Hicks Locomotive & Car Works for their service/work cars. In addition, there were also second-hand equipment dealers. In the absence of any roster info, all we can do is speculate at this point. Even the motor hauling this work train has design features (that train door, for example) which don’t match any of the other cars on the LEBG&N roster (at least those of which photographs exist). Unfortunately, there is no back-up information as to the location or date of this image.

This piece would not have been possible without the assistance of Ms. Rene Dix, Branch Manager of the Woodville Public Library, as well as her colleague Matt Hammer. In addition, the 1960 book by George Hilton and John Due “The Electric Railways in America,” H. Roger Grant’s 2016 book “Electric Interurbans and the American People” and the NRHS’s undated “Interurban Trails” were extensively consulted. Jewett Company records preserved by Willis McCaleb and George Krambles, also provided substantial insight.

Map is not to scale. Article layout and map by Frank Hicks.