Proposal The AVI, as it emerged, was only a portion of a proposal in 1910 for a large network of interurban lines focusing on Wichita, running passenger and freight services mainly in competition with the
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and expecting to feed freight to the
St. Louis–San Francisco Railway and the
Midland Valley Railroad, also to Wichita's new transcontinental line the
Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway when that was finished– it never was. The main line was to have been from Wichita to
Salina, which two cities lacked any direct passenger railroad service between them– although the line would have run closely parallel with the
Santa Fe to Newton, then the
Missouri Pacific Railroad to
McPherson and finally the
Union Pacific Railroad to Salina. From this line, another one would have run from
Van Arsdale Junction (south-west of Newton) to Hutchinson and
Great Bend, again closely paralleling
Santa Fe lines. From Hutchinson, a third line would have run direct to
Hudson and would have given rail access to a portion of territory that lacked it. To the south of Wichita, a line would have run to
Oxford via
Belle Plaine, with a short branch to
Wellington from the latter place. At Oxford, it would have joined a circular service running Oxford -
Winfield -
Arkansas City -
Geuda Springs- Oxford which would have subsumed a pre-existing little interurban between Winfield and Arkansas City called the
Southwestern Interurban Railway of Kansas. The project was a strictly local one, financed with capital raised by selling shares in the cities it hoped to serve. The chief promoters were W. O. Van Arsdale, a Wichita stockbroker who gave his name to the railway's main junction, and George Theis Jnr who was to acquire control and who had an amusement park named after him on the line outside Newton. The city of Wichita was strongly in support, and invested $30 000. Theis, a Wichita capitalist and enthusiast for interurbans, founded the
Interurban Construction Company to build the system.
Construction Construction began in 1910 on the first long section from
Wichita north to
Sedgwick. On November 19, 1910 the line from Wichita to
Valley Center was officially opened, and service was extended to
Sedgwick on December. In 1911, construction began on the Sedgwick to
Newton segment, which was opened on October 9, 1911. With the completion of the line to Newton, work began on the line to
Halstead, which branched off of the Newton line at
Van Arsdale Junction and headed straight west for five miles. This section opened late in 1911. It was not until 1915 that construction began on extending the Halstead branch another to reach
Hutchinson, but work commenced in April of that year and the first AVI car ran to Hutchinson on December 22, 1915.
Bethel Line The only other branch operated by the AVI was a short line north from Newton to
Bethel College which opened in 1913 and was abandoned in 1925. This was essentially an urban streetcar line nicknamed the
Bethel Line– the city lacked a system of its own.
Downtown access The interurban passenger services initially used the streetcar systems of Wichita and Hutchinson to access downtown, although these were separately owned. However, a private right of way was constructed into Wichita in 1923. This was very fortunate, because the Wichita streetcars were abandoned in 1933 and the interurban would have had to shut to passengers in that year otherwise. In 1932 the AVI was forced to build its own access to the
Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad station at Hutchinson, after the city streetcar company (confusingly called the
Hutchinson Interurban Railway) went bankrupt and was scrapped.
End of extension hopes These downtown extensions were the only ones that the AVI built, and the rest of the original scheme was given up in the Twenties. In 1922 George Theis Jr.,
President of the AVI, bought out the
Southwestern Interurban Railway of Kansas on his own account, and restructured it as the
Arkansas City, Winfield and Northern Railway. This was with the intention of making it part of the AVI system, but the ACW&N was a hopeless enterprise. It had originally opened in 1909 and included in-city electric trolley systems for both Ark City and Winfield, as well as the of actual interurban trackage between the two. By mid-1925 though, Arkansas City was dismantling its in-city system and by April 1926, the trackage between the two cities was no longer in use and was being taken up. The last vestige of the ACW&N to operate was the College Hill line of the Winfield city portion of the railway, making its last run in May 1926. This was just months before George Theis' tragic death on August 13, 1926.
Struggle for business The interurban was three years younger than the
Ford Model T automobile, and so always suffered from increasing automobile use. It was also hit by the mechanization of agriculture in the Twenties, as combine harvesters and tractors reduced the demand for farm workers and so the number of rural travelers. On the other hand, bus competition was patchy and the company actually ran feeder bus services (many other interurbans were crippled by competition from
jitney buses). The company responded to declining passenger revenue by raising fares to 3.6 cents per mile– very high for any interurban– but this did not help. On the other hand, freight revenue increased and became very important. The AVI had been projected with freight traffic in mind, exchanged with friendly steam railroads, but initially the emphasis was on LCL (less-than-carload or parcel) freight and on milk, cream and other perishable foodstuffs taken into the cities from farms. Only when roads improved was it feasible for farmers to use trucks to get to market for such items. As time went on, carload freight came to dominate and this was mostly switched through to steam roads. Important commodities were cattle, grain and oil. A large sand and gravel pit was at Forest Park north of Wichita, and the Carey Salt Company opened a deep salt mine just east of Hutchinson in 1923 which was to be the AVI's most important customer. The salt mine proprietors opened a very short switching line in 1923, running from the AVI west of their mine for about south-west to the
Missouri Pacific Railroad at Hutchinson, and incorporated this as a
common carrier called the
Hutchinson and Northern Railroad. This road also owned the mine spur from the AVI line.
Failure The
Great Depression affected the AVI as it did all interurban lines, and revenues declined owing to the serious economic downturn. As a result, the company entered
receivership in 1933. It had well-laid track, so the receiver ordered
deferred maintenance but the deterioration resulting damaged the passenger business further. Interurban cars were engineered with relatively soft springing in order to take up irregularities in track with light rails, but once the track decayed the ride could oscillate violently as a result. An evocative description of an interurban ride in the last days: "A ride ... was an experience never to be forgotten. Particularly on the wooden cars the bodies jerked back and forth, and threatened to fly off their trucks every time the cars started or stopped quickly. Windows rattled in their rotting sashes, and interior doors that could no longer close were banging against their warped frames. The gentle rolling motion of earlier years gave way to a violent rocking that made it impossible to keep parcels in their luggage racks, and the rocking in turn was intensified by twisting lurches as one set of wheels passed over a dip in the rails where the ties had rotted." On July 31, 1938, all passenger service on the AVI was abandoned, but the company continued to haul freight using its
electric locomotives and
box motors. In November 1939 the line was sold to the
H.E. Salzberg Company, which its name to
Arkansas Valley Railway.
Dieselization came within a year, and the last electric operation was made on October 20, 1940, by a trio of interurban cars held in storage since abandonment of passenger service. Following this run the wires came down and all freight was hauled by diesel. This only lasted a year and a half; in July 1942 the
War Production Board requisitioned the line for
scrap and the track was mostly torn up. However, the salt mine at Hutchinson still needed rail access so the
Hutchinson and Northern Railroad bought the length of track to there from its property in the city, about . This is still in operation (2020). ==Route==