How utilities grew from rail operations. Many streetcar companies started out as horse car operations. Large numbers of those companies were never formally incorporated, so researching horse car companies is challenging. Only small numbers of horse car companies appear in the database.

As electricity came along in the later part of the 18th century, many horse car operations switched over to electric power. Requiring access to money for greater infrastructure, streetcar companies incorporated all across the country and are well represented in my database.

In big cities, redundant and parallel streetcar lines were the norm. Business logic dictated heavy company consolidation was going to be necessary to help pay for expensive generating plants.

Companies gradually realized that extra power could be sold to business and ultimately households. During the first part of the 1900s, company names started including power and light nomenclature along with transportation.

After World War I, highly mobile buses started appearing which drew ridership from fixed rail routes. Development of electric-powered buses grew very rapidly around World War II and streetcar operations disappeared by the hundreds.

As demand for electricity grew and demand for streetcars decreased, electric companies evolved into utilities and public service companies. Essentially all references to rail transportation had disappeared from corporate names by 1950.

If one were a stickler for details, hundreds of utilities could be included in a railroad database, but only if each individual company were researched to determine the moment when streetcar transportation switched over to buses. Generally speaking, most utilities changed their corporate names within a year or so of dropping streetcar operations. At that time, the word "Transit" came into vogue, generally signalling the switch to rubber-tired buses.

Since I want to save time, I have a simple rule about utilities is. I will list utilties and public service companies in the database only when their company names imply rail involvement. All other utilities are excluded.

Some collectors argue that today's utilities are big, big users of rail equipment. Believe me I understand. I used to be a coal geologist and am intimately familiar with the exploration, mining, transportation and burning of coal. At one time, I could tell you to which power plants unit trains were headed by their reporting marks.

Today's large railroads haul staggering amounts of coal by 100- to 120-car "unit trains" and most of the those unit trains are owned by utilities.

Some people have suggested I include utilities in the database when the own unit trains. While there is a certain curious logic to the argument, those people may not actually understand that "unit trains" are simply strings of cars. The locomotives that pull unit trains and the rails they ride on are owned by railroad companies.

If you were to fit the owner of a unit trains into a single category, would you name that category "railroad" or "utility"?

Would average collectors look in a catalog named Collectible Stocks and Bonds of North American Railroads for information about stock certificates from Duke Power?

I don't think so.

No separate catalog for utility companies? For those who would like to argue that there is no separate catalog for utility company certificates, I invite you to take the opportunity to start one for yourself.