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Matt Cosgro photo, all rights reserved. Used with permission.
During 1930 the Cincinnati Car Company built for the Cincinnati & Lake Erie Railroad a fleet of 20 radically new high speed lightweight cars constructed largely of aluminum and equipped with four 100 horsepower motors. Numbered 110-129, they were capable of traveling at speeds of 60 to 80 miles per hour and were operated on many long runs, including a 285 mile trip from Cincinnati, Ohio to Detroit, Michigan. The cars were introduced to the public by such spectacles as outracing an airplane and a fast auto and, of course, they were exhibited in the towns and cities served by the CLE&E system. The lightweights were designed to run at high speeds on less than first class track, and one thing they did well was to produce spectacular wrecks on single track lines; the resulting damage claims were a further burden for the financially strapped interurbans.
Abandonment of the CL&E began in 1937, and by 1939 the system was but a mere shadow of its former self. Six of the lightweight cars were sold to the Cedar Rapids & Iowa City Railway in Iowa, and 13 others went to the Lehigh Valley Transit Company, which was modernizing its Liberty Bell Route interurban line between Allentown and Norristown, Pennsylvania.
One of the cars sold to the Cedar Rapids & Iowa City Railway, better known at CRANDIC, was acquired by Seashore in 1954. The car, No. 118 of the coach-baggage type, has been kept in CRANDIC livery.
History from Historic Cars: The National Collection at the Seashore Trolley Museum by Ben Minnich
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