Puget Sound Electric Railway

Sal is a voice that rides along as you drive Washington's roads: the road ahead, the pass, the stories of the places you pass.

The Puget Sound Electric Railway opened on September 25, 1902, an interurban line of 38 miles between Tacoma and Seattle [1]. It was headquartered in Kent [1]. Power came from overhead wire in the cities and from third rail out in the country, and that third rail did its share of damage, with livestock and people electrocuted and dead cows causing trouble for the trolleys themselves [1]. Its depot sat in the corner room of the Pacific Block, later called the Interurban Building, at Occidental and Yesler in Seattle, where it connected with the streetcars and other interurbans [1]. What undid it was mostly competition from trucks, buses, automobiles and the steam railroads, all pulling riders away in the early nineteen-twenties, along with fares held down by the state Railroad Commission, which meant to limit what the company could earn [1]. A federal judge let it suspend operations on October 13, 1928, and service ended with trains on December 30, 1928, though the rails stayed in place until 1930 [1]. Stretches of that right-of-way carry the Interurban Trail through Fife, Milton, Edgewood, Pacific, Algona, Auburn, Kent and Tukwila [1].