The 1882 attempt and Van Depoele's cars: the first electric streetcars

1882–1886 · THE EXPERIMENT

The failure of 1882: South Bend's claim on electric traction begins with a failure, and the failure is documented first-hand in the state history of its electric railroads. Jerry Marlette's Electric Railroads of Indiana (1959) records that the first recorded attempt at electrification in Indiana was made by the South Bend street railway in 1882: the car could move only a few feet at a time, because the current was dissipated into the ground faster than the power house could supply it. The company, to its credit in the record, did not turn against the new power; it waited for better equipment.

November 1885: The better equipment came with the Belgian engineer Charles J. Van Depoele, and in the fall of 1885 his system ran on Michigan Street. Marlette dates the successful run precisely: on 15 November 1885 the first successful operation of an electric car in Indiana occurred when a South Bend car ran on Michigan Street from the 500 block north to one and one-half miles south of Washington Street, with Van Depoele himself in charge of the operation. A second summary of the same episode describes a two-and-a-half-mile line worked by four small cars of five horsepower and one large car of ten, and dates the beginning of operation 14 November 1885; the Northern Indiana Railway's own historians round the season to October 1885, the date the Story of South Bend section of this history follows. The dates differ by days and by rounding, and all are carried here; the event does not move. It is the run the railfans' standard history argues — in the words the Trains section quotes — to have been the first operation of electric streetcars on a major public street in North America. Notre Dame Magazine's telling goes further and calls the 1882 Michigan Street car "the first electric streetcar in the country"; Marlette's record of that year is an attempt that failed, and the two tellings stand here side by side, the magazine's claim and the state history's account, unmerged.

Why it died: Technically the 1885 operation succeeded; economically it failed, and the record gives two causes that do not exclude each other. Marlette: the excessive power requirements, spent compensating for current dissipation, made the line uneconomic, and it reverted to mule power early in 1886 while Van Depoele continued developing his system elsewhere — his later eminence as one of the outstanding electric railway engineers in the country is Marlette's own judgment. The Northern Indiana history adds the street-level cause: the electric operation died before the next spring because the Michigan Street merchants would not allow the railway to clear snow from the tracks, plowing having spoiled the sleighing and supposedly kept customers from the stores. The first electric street railway in the city's history was thus beaten by the cost of its own current and by the winter street it ran in. Horse and mule power resumed, and durable electrification waited until June 1890, when part of the system was electrified for good.

Sources:

1. Jerry Marlette, Electric Railroads of Indiana (1959) — the 1882 attempt and its failure; the run of 15 November 1885 on Michigan Street; the economic failure and the reversion to mule power early in 1886; the chronology's entry for 15 November 1885.
2. George K. Bradley, Northern Indiana Railway Inc., CERA Bulletin 132 (1998), published summary and contents — electric operation begun in October 1885; the merchants and the snow; horse cars until June 1890.
3. Notre Dame Magazine, "The brief, eventful life of the Notre Dame streetcar" — the 1882 car described as the first electric streetcar in the country.
4. The Story of South Bend section section of this history — the October 1885 experiment and the standard history's "first on a major public street" argument.