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15 No company records have survived the more than one hundred years since the Niles Car & Manufacturing Company began producing railway cars, so newspapers, trade journals, and traction line histories have been relied upon to determine what cars were built, and when. Often orders would be placed and reported in the trade journals but a few months later the order would be reducedor even canceled. Andthe date the cars were deliveredwas frequently not the same year in which they were ordered or built. Nevertheless the information reported here will give the reader a fairly good idea of the activity at the plant. Niles was best known for its big interurban cars, and those were what the companypreferredtoconcentrateon.However,thecompanywasnotaboutto turn down orders for smaller city cars that would keep the plant busy, and the Nilescatalogincludedillustrationsofseveralsmallsingle-truckcardesignsfor city use. It was decided not to embark on the construction of motors or trucks (Baldwin trucks were preferred), but Niles would supply those components with the car bodies to give the buyer a ready-to-run product, if so desired. But intheinterestofeconomy,tractionlinesfrequentlypurchasedonlycarbodies, towhichtheyaddedtrucks,motors,andotherfinishingmaterialsintheirown shops to complete the car, saving the markup (usually 10 percent above cost) that Niles would have applied to those components. Theinterurbanerawascharacterizedbyboom-and-bustcycles,andfortunatelyNilescommencedoperationsatthebeginningofoneoftheearlybursts of activity. Business was very good for the first couple of years. In February 1902, the Street Railway Review reported, “The Niles Car & Manufacturing Company of Niles, Ohio now has its plant in operation and announces that it is prepared to bid upon and furnish all classes of rolling stock for electric and steam railways. . . . Among the orders the company now has in hand are the following:AuroraElgin&ChicagoRR,30motorcars;WesternOhioRailway, 3}} The Cars Roll Out The Electric Pullman 16 20 motor cars and four work cars; Wisconsin Construction Co., 6; Alliance (O.) Electric Ry., 6; Toledo Railways and Light Co., 20; Detroit United Railway , 45; Louisville Anchorage & Pewee Valley Electric Railway, 15 ten- and twelve-bench open cars, for early spring delivery.” By the end of its first year of operation, Niles had produced or rebuilt well over one hundred cars. Although 1903 was a recession year in the United States, Niles orders carried it through to a record of nearly 150 cars. In March thecompanyreportedhavingrecentlyshippedten20-footcarbodiestoCuba’s Havana Electric Railway Company, with an order for twenty-five more. These car bodies were to be equipped with trucks and motors in Cuba and were unusual due to the fact that the Havana system used dual overhead wires, requiring the cars to have two trolley poles. The Des Moines City Railway was soon to receive twenty 28-foot vestibuled cars, and the United Power Company of East Liverpool another four. Three more car bodies went to the Pennsylvania & Mahoning Valley Railway, and interurban cars were also shipped to the Western Ohio Railway. Unfortunately , details of these cars have faded into obscurity. Steam railroads were not overlooked. Shipped from Niles to the Seaboard Air Line Railway of Richmond, Virginia, were ten 62-foot passenger coaches, fully vestibuled, running on six-wheel trucks. The coaches were finished in quartered oak, inlaid, with full empire decks for the run between New Jersey and Florida. Sent to the Terre Haute & Indianapolis Railroad (an adjunct of the Pennsylvania Railroad) were twelve six-wheel-trucked 78-foot passenger coaches and four combination coaches for use between Jersey City and St. Louis. These cars had Hale & Kilburn walkover plush upholstered seats in the coaches and horsehide in the combinations. All of these early cars made by Niles were wood, however, the railroads were soon converting all their passenger equipment to steel cars, largely for safety reasons, so it is likely that these railroad cars did not last very long in revenue service. The interurban railroads were a bit slower to adopt steel cars, but they finally did; the delay was due mostly to their being strapped financially and already having a roster sufficient to handle the traffic. Niles did build some steel cars in its later years. Production in 1904 plummeted as a result of a national financial crisis that occurred the previous year. The panic caught many overextended traction syndicates, and money to finance railway building was very difficult to obtain. Many properties that had begun construction on a promise found themselves in big trouble and lines that had been proposed were put on hold, many permanently. This affected Niles’s business to a marked degree, but the company directors were confident of a later rebound and went ahead with...

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