a cheap way of getting trains from a to b!

Just run 'em down the road! This is done even today, and in the USA of all places. This is Michigan City where the interurban trains run right down the street - an incredibly cheap and easy way of introducing rail that avoids land costs and new engineering. Although this film is from 1995 this line is not only still running but flourishing, using electricity and hardly seeming to bother road traffic. After Peak Oil with far less traffic on the roads this will be an increasingly common sight, allowing railways to reach places easily and linking markets and populations quickly and cheaply.

interurban rebirth

The Interurban is an idea whose time has come. Once the USA was covered in these electrified lines, which brought modern transport to many towns and villages for the first time.

Unfortunately the rise of cheap oil meant that in many cases they only had a short life span. Amazingly modern, cheap and fast travel was replaced by spluttering and 'cheaper' anti-social cars and buses. With the end of cheap oil the interurban will return, some of the new batch of American tramways and light railways already show interurban characteristics as they edge out of the city centres.

But this line, the Chicago and South Bend, has kept going the whole time. It includes sections of classic street-running as well as fast reserved sections. Soon this will be just one line among many, but for a while it was the only survivor!