Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad - Improving Passenger Service

Improving Passenger Service

To embark on dramatically improving passenger service and schedules, shortly after the C&LE corporate formation, President Conway supervised the design of and acquisition of a unique fleet of twenty lightweight, high speed, power efficient, aluminum bodied bright red passenger cars (known eventually as "Red Devils") from the Cincinnati Car Company. These interurban cars embodied the latest in Art-deco styling and were equipped with numerous amenities including leather bucket seats with high headrests. Half were built as lounges to provide parlor car first class comfort. In order to promote the cars, the C&LE staged a race between Red Devil #126 and an airplane. The car achieved a speed of 97 miles per hour and "won" the highly publicized race. Unfortunately, and typical of most interurbans, considerable open country operation was on side-of-road track and considerable urban operation was on track embedded in town streets with tight radius turns, so the Red Devils had to contend with automobile traffic and would rarely achieve these speeds in day-to-day operation, but in open country, particularly existing on the Springfield-Toledo division, they operated up to ninety miles per hour if behind schedule. The Red Devils were 43'9" long, 11'4" high and weighed 22 metric tons versus a typical 1920s large steel interurban 55' long and 14' high and 50 tons. Night time freight speed could also be high, reportedly up to sixty miles per hour. Unfortunately, the line was not signalled, and the high speeds combined with no signal protection on a single-track line led to serious head on collisions. Through Red Devil parlor car service was provided from Cincinnati to Detroit in conjunction with a Toledo to Detroit interurban, the Eastern Michigan Railway, but that did not last long as the EM stopped running in 1932.