The street railway in brief — the system this story inherits

1872–1947 · HORSE CARS, THEN ELECTRIC CARS

Horses on Calhoun: The Citizens Street Railroad Company opened horse-drawn service on Calhoun Street in 1872 — one strand of the record dates the first horse-trolley line to 1871 — running from the Pennsylvania Railroad depot north to the Aveline Hotel at Main and Calhoun. The Centlivre brewery added its own horse-car line out Spy Run to the brewery from 1887. The full railroad record of these lines is the Trains section's; what matters here is the operator's corporate line, because the bus company descends from it. In 1892 the Fort Wayne Electric Railway Company took over the Fort Wayne Street Railroad Company and converted the system to electric operation — the Centlivre line held out as an independent until it was merged and electrified in 1894 — adding the Columbia Street (Lakeside) route the same year. Consolidation followed consolidation: the Fort Wayne Consolidated Railway in 1899 gave way to the Fort Wayne Traction Company, which absorbed the Lakeside line in 1900 and became the Fort Wayne and Wabash Valley Traction Company in 1904, reorganized after the Kingsland wreck as the Fort Wayne and Northern Indiana Traction Company in 1911.

The system at its extent: By the traction era's end there were fifteen streetcar lines criss-crossing Fort Wayne, and a contemporary reckoning still gave the city some 58 miles of street railway in 1939. The fare in the 1913–14 Griswold-Phelps handbook was five cents, six rides for twenty-five, with transfer privilege. Every line funneled through Transfer Corner, at Calhoun and Main, from which a rider could reach any part of the city. In 1920 the property passed to the Indiana Service Corporation, Samuel Insull's Indiana utility system, which ran Fort Wayne's streetcars and interurbans as one property — the interurbans to Indiana Railroad in 1930, the city lines until 1948. The streetcar suburbs the lines built out — along Calhoun, Broadway, Creighton and the rest — are the Neighborhoods section's ground; the lines' last runs belong to the next entry.

Sources: Fort Wayne Citilink history (Citizens Street Railroad 1872; Centlivre 1887; Fort Wayne Electric Railway and the 1894 Lakeside route); ACGSI Public Transportation page (the 1871 variant; the first route, Pennsylvania depot to the Aveline Hotel); ChicagoRailFan Fort Wayne transit record (the 1894 Centlivre merger; the 58 miles of 1939); Trolley Tuesday's Fort Wayne Transit Company history (the consolidation chain 1899–1911; fifteen streetcar lines); the Griswold-Phelps Handbook and Guide to Fort Wayne, 1913–14 (five-cent fare and Transfer Corner).