The Oklahoma Railway Company (ORy) operated interurban lines to El Reno, Guthrie, and Norman, and several streetcar lines in Oklahoma City, and the surrounding area from 1904 to 1947.
Freight traffic was also handled on the interurban lines as well as a few of the streetcar lines. The railway had a connection with the Fort Smith and Western Railroad at Guthrie and the two companies interchanged freight cars there.
As World War II approached, the company began to shift focus away from interurban/streetcar operation towards buses; as a result, the company began to gradually abandon its rail operations. As part of this action, several line segments were leased, then sold to the Santa Fe and the Rock Island.
Famous quotes containing the words oklahoma, railway and/or company:
“I know only one person who ever crossed the ocean without feeling it, either spiritually or physically.... he went from Oklahoma to France and back again ... without ever getting off dry land. He remembers several places I remember too, and several French words, but he says firmly, “We must of went different ways. I don’t rightly recollect no water, ever.””
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“The Bermudas are said to have been discovered by a Spanish ship of that name which was wrecked on them.... Yet at the very first planting of them with some sixty persons, in 1612, the first governor, the same year, “built and laid the foundation of eight or nine forts.” To be ready, one would say, to entertain the first ship’s company that should be next shipwrecked on to them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)