Photos from Calumet Room / Hammond Historical Society.
Top: Tracks converge on the downtown area of the city. Bottom: View of a typical street car interior.
Originally founded in 1892 as the Hammond Electric Railway Company, it went out of business after just a year of operation. The company only had a short run of two miles of track down Hohman Avenue.
It was purchased in 1893 by a group of Hammond businessmen and renamed Hammond, Whiting & East Chicago Electric Railway Company. Its routes and trackage expanded to cover twenty-five miles and served the cities for which it took its name.
The South Chicago City Railway bought the line in 1896 and then equipped it with the familiar green street cars that lead to its nickname the "Green Line".
In 1903 fifteen cents would get you a one way trip to the Chicago Loop verses the seventy-five cents that the steam railroads would charge for the same distance. But the steam railroad lines quickly lowered their fares in the face of this new competition.
The trolly line rarely made a profit. With that in mind the glorious era of street cars in the city of Hammond came to an end on Sunday, June 9th 1940, when the line ceased operations.
