The North Shore may have been a “super interurban,” but super did not translate to being profitable. As historian George Hilton noted, “Few industries have arisen so rapidly or declined so quickly” as interurban rail, “and no industry of its size has had a worse financial record.” The Depression sent the North Shore into bankruptcy in 1932. Thanks to wartime traffic, it emerged from bankruptcy in 1946, only to see automobiles capture most of its customers over the next few years.

Click image to download a 4.3-MB PDF of this 12-page timetable.

This 1956 timetable has a snazzy cover (which is the back cover) compared with yesterday’s from 1949. A look inside, however, reveals far fewer trains than in 1949. The Shore Line route, which once carried nearly three dozen trains a day each way, had been abandoned in 1955. The other two routes, Skokie Valley and the Libertyville branch, still operated about as many trains as in 1949, mainly because the company was required to do so by state regulators. The railroad was abandoned in 1963.