Cincinnati & Lake Erie Railroad's "Red Devil" #110 was the last regularly
scheduled interurban to leave Columbus. It is shown here at
Columbus Interurban Terminal
the afternoon of October 29, 1938. Someone has chalked "Last Run" on
the front dash. The story goes that on the inbound trip to Columbus
the car was stopped at a way station and someone handed the motorman a
bouquet of flowers which you can see through the front window.
The group of men in the front of the photo look like they might be bus
drivers. There are three busses in the photo, one with its engine
door open. We can only hope it was broken while the reliable
interurban is getting ready to pull out for its last trip to Dayton.
Columbus Interurban Terminal opened in 1912 when it was served by upwards
of 140 interurbans a day, now twenty-seven years later is was all over.
All that would be left of the Central Ohio interurbans would be three
small freight operations at Obetz, Marion and Springfield.
Nineteen of the twenty Red Devils would be sold to either the Cedar
Rapids and Iowa City Railway or the Lehigh Valley Transit. One,
#124, was destroyed in a 1933 fire at Cumminsville, Ohio.
Photo by Robert W. Richardson from
the Dennis Lamont Collection.
