Cincinnati Car Company
The Cincinnati Car Company or Cincinnati Car Corporation was a subsidiary of the Ohio Traction Company. It designed and constructed interurban cars, streetcars and buses. It was founded in 1902 in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1928, it bought the Versare Car Company.
Products
In the period 1900 to 1920, Cincinnati Car Co made many arch window all wood interurban coaches, combines, freight "motors," and work cars. Starting in the 1920s, interurbans became all steel and were very heavy and consumed a large amount of electric power when operating. When interurban lines began to face competition from autos on newly paved highways, the need to use less power in car operation became essential, and the company was among the first to make lightweight cars. Its chief engineer Thomas Elliot designed the "curved-side" car, a lightweight model that used curved steel plates in body construction. Instead of the floor, the side plates and side sills bore the bulk of the weight load. Longitudinal floor supports were no longer needed, which made the cars lighter than conventional cars. The first cars of this type were sold in 1922 and many after. It was a successful product. For instance, the Red Devil weighted only. Curved-side cars were also called "Balanced Lightweight Cars".In 1929, the company designed lightweight partially aluminum low profile high-speed coaches for the electrified Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad interurban that operated between Cincinnati, Dayton, and Toledo and on adjacent interurban lines to Cleveland and Detroit. Twenty were purchased, painted bright red, and called Red Devils by the C&LE. These interurban cars, whose open country speed could reach, were a forerunner of today's high-speed trains. Both the carbodies and new design small wheel low riding trucks were well adapted for high-speed running on typical interurban light rail rough track. In 1939, the C&LE abandoned operation, and the Red Devils were sold to the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City Railway in Iowa and the Lehigh Valley Transit Company in Pennsylvania. They continued to operate successfully into the 1950s.
Another customer of the Cincinnati Car Company was the Northern Indiana Railway which was centered in South Bend, IN, and had interurban lines radiating out to Michigan City and Goshen in IN and St. Joseph, MI. Cincinnati Car Company cars were purchased by the Northern Indiana Railway over the years for interurban and streetcar service as well as freight trailers and flatcars.
The Northern Indiana Railway purchased ten new streetcars from the Cincinnati Car Company in 1930 which was the next to last order for new cars built by the company. After the Northern Indiana Railway abandoned its last five streetcar lines in 1930 and replaced them with buses these streetcars went onto the Virginia Electric Company in Richmond where they continued in use until 1949.