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New Electric Line

New Electric Line image
Parent Issue
Day
27
Month
January
Year
1899
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

NEW ELECTRIC LINE

To Be Finished Before Aug. 1 Next

TO DEXTER AND LANSING

A Big Deal for Its Construction Made

It Will Open up Much Valuable Country for Ann Arbor and it Will Cost over a Million Dollars to Build It

The construction of an electric line between Lansing and Ann Arbor by way of Dexter next spring and summer is now practically an assured fact. This line will aid Ann Arbor much more than the Detroit line as it will bring trade to the city instead of taking it out. It will make an 80 mile road through a very populous district and through many villages. It will run from Lansing to Mason, thence to Dexter and on to Ann Arbor. It will strike a number of lakes which will prove popular for resorters.

A meeting was held in Detroit Saturday between representatives of Westinghouse, Church, Kerr & Co. , one of the best known firms of contracting electrical engineers and manufacturers in the country and directors of the company at which arrangements were made for the building and equipping of the road by the Westinghouse company. The projectors and stockholders of the road present were C. E. Mapes and Dr. R. J. Shanks, of Lansing, Thomas Birkett, of Dexter, Morris Coppin, of Plainfield, and Mr. Chase, of Dansville. The representatives of the Westinghouse company present were W. W. Churchill, of New York, the chief engineer of the company; O. A. Stranahan, of Chicago, one of the company's financial experts; C. E. Register, the Chicago representative of the company, and Wallace Franklin, the Detroit representative.

The road is one which has been on paper for the last two years, with no immediate prospects of ever becoming an entity, but negotiations with the Westinghouse people have been in progress for some time. This concern is anxious to establish its plants throughout the country and sees in the future of the road ample guarantee for the capital invested.

The capital stock of the company is $250,000, and when the road is built the Westinghouse Co. is to float its bond, to the extent of .$1,175,000. No details could be obtained as to how much of the stock is taken or how far the plans for financing the road are completed, except that a market for the bonds has already been arranged for, and that none of those interested are looking for any serious hitch. The Westinghouse Co. has built and financed a good many larger ventures than this.

One of the Detroit papers stated that an agreement was entered into by which the Westinghouse company is to go ahead and build and equip the road and finance it, and work on the road is to begin within four weeks and the road in running order over the whole line by Aug. 1. It is understood at this end of the line that this was the talk but that a definite agreement was not signed at this meeting, but that the probabilities are as stated. Mr. Birkett, the Dexter promoter of the road, could not be reached by telephone this afternoon as he had gone to Pinckney.

An Ypsilanti dispatch to the Free Press speaks of a project previously mentioned in the Argus as follows: "It is now confidently expected that within a year an electric railway will be constructed between this city and Saline, a distance of 12 miles. Local capitalists are interested in the enterprise. "