The Ohio Electric Railway Company was an interurban

Interurban

An interurban, also called a radial railway in parts of Canada, is a type of electric passenger railroad; in short a hybrid between tram and train. Interurbans enjoyed widespread popularity in the first three decades of the twentieth century in North America. Until the early 1920s, most roads were...

 formed in 1907 with the consolidation of 14 smaller interurban railways. It was one of Ohio

Ohio

Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...

's largest interurban systems. It connected Toledo

Toledo, Ohio

Toledo is the fourth most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Lucas County. Toledo is in northwest Ohio, on the western end of Lake Erie, and borders the State of Michigan...

, Lima

Lima, Ohio

Lima is a city in and the county seat of Allen County, Ohio, United States. The municipality is located in northwestern Ohio along Interstate 75 approximately north of Dayton and south-southwest of Toledo....

, Dayton

Dayton, Ohio

Dayton is the 6th largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County, the fifth most populous county in the state. The population was 141,527 at the 2010 census. The Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 841,502 in the 2010 census...

, Columbus

Columbus, Ohio

Columbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...

, and Cincinnati, providing efficient passenger service to scores of small towns in western Ohio.

The 1920s

The OE went bankrupt in 1927, and the original interurbans assumed their former identities or abandoned operation. The lines evolved into the Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad

Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad

The Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad was a short-lived electric interurban railway that operated in 1930-1939 Depression-era Ohio between Cincinnati, Springfield, Columbus, and Toledo...

 in 1929 and expanded services particularly in freight operation.

The 1930s

Business conditions of the Depression 1930s

Great Depression in the United States

The Great Depression began with the Wall Street Crash of October, 1929 and rapidly spread worldwide. The market crash marked the beginning of a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation, plunging farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth and personal advancement...

 led to the complete replacement of interurbans with bus

Bus

A bus is a road vehicle designed to carry passengers. Buses can have a capacity as high as 300 passengers. The most common type of bus is the single-decker bus, with larger loads carried by double-decker buses and articulated buses, and smaller loads carried by midibuses and minibuses; coaches are...

es by 1939. The company changed its name to Cincinnati & Lake Erie Transportation, and it was absorbed by the Greyhound

Greyhound Lines

Greyhound Lines, Inc., based in Dallas, Texas, is an intercity common carrier of passengers by bus serving over 3,700 destinations in the United States, Canada and Mexico, operating under the well-known logo of a leaping greyhound. It was founded in Hibbing, Minnesota, USA, in 1914 and...

system in 1947.