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Date: 2003-04 CELEBRATE A CENTENNIAL WITH THE FOX RIVER TROLLEY MUSEUM FREE RIDES MEMORIAL DAY TO RESIDENTS OF ELGIN AND SOUTH ELGIN A century ago, electric lights and motion pictures were new, the automobile was a novelty, and Elgin-area residents celebrated the arrival of a trolley line that connected them with Chicago. The Aurora Elgin & Chicago R.R. (AE&C) operated its first high-speed electric trains between Chicago and Elgin on Memorial Day, 1903, some nine months after service had begun on the line’s Aurora branch. The service was an instantaneous hit. Although the AE&C was not the first direct link between Elgin and Chicago, or even Elgin’s first interurban (inter city) electric railway, it provided a quality and frequency of service not seen before. The Fox River Trolley Museum , in South Elgin, remembers the excitement of a century ago this Memorial Day, May 26, when it offers residents of Elgin and South Elgin free rides, for one day only. Residents will have to provide valid identification to claim their free ride, said Ed Konecki, museum president. Trains of the AE&C and its successor, the Chicago Aurora & Elgin R.R. (CA&E), terminated on the east bank of the Fox River, next to the Elgin Opera House, one of many attractions that provided healthy ridership in the interurban’s early days. South Elgin was served through the Clintonville station, on Main Street, a building that survives along the Illinois Prairie Path, which today occupies much of the CA&E’s former right-of-way. The trolley line offered parlor and dining car service 1904-1929, picked up milk from farmers for many years, delivered newspapers and small packages to online destinations into the 1950s, and hauled freight trains behind electric locomotives until 1959. The last passenger trains ran July 3, 1957, and government regulators approved formal abandonment in 1961, two years after the last freight trains ran. As wreckers dismantled the line, the Railway Equipment Leasing and Investment Co. (RELIC), a group of electric railway enthusiasts, banded together to preserve relics of the Chicago area’s electric railway heritage. The CA&E cars purchased at the time formed the beginnings of its collection, preserved today at the Fox River Trolley Museum. One of the CA&E cars preserved, #20, is the oldest operating example of an American interurban trolley car, built for the opening of the railroad a century ago. The core of the museum’s operation is a remnant of Elgin’s first interurban line, built in 1896 as part of a line that eventually connected Carpentersville with Yorkville and part of the AE&C 1906-1922. The Fox River Trolley Museum is an all-volunteer, not-for-profit organization dedicated to preserving the colorful history of Chicago’s “L” and interurban electric railway lines. Fox River Line trains operate 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sundays and holidays through Nov. 2, and Saturdays June 28-Aug. 30. Regular fares are $3.50 for adults and $2 for senior citizens and children 3 11. Children under 3 ride free. Riders can board at the line’s Castlemuir terminal, 361 S. LaFox St. (Illinois Route 31), three blocks south of the State Street stoplight in the village of South Elgin, or at the Blackhawk Forest Preserve picnic grove terminal, just off Route 31 in St. Charles Township. For information, or to charter a train, call (847) 697-4676. 
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