I’m Steve Martinez and this is the Daily Briefing newsletter by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Sign up here to get it sent to your inbox each morning.
We should get a break from the humidity Wednesday as temperatures drop to the mid-70s with a passing shower in the morning. Expect breezy and cooler weather with partly cloudy skies. The mugginess should diminish throughout the afternoon.
Milwaukee used to have a rapid-transit train between downtown and the burbs. What happened to it?
Before June 30, 1951, you could ride an interurban train from Milwaukee to Waukesha and back.
The train ran for nearly half a century before the Milwaukee Electric Railway & Light Co. — the utility now known as We Energies — began the utility began abandoning less profitable interurban lines.
When word got around the Milwaukee lines — running from the electric company’s Public Service Building at 231 W. Michigan St. to Hales Corners and Waukesha — were to be sold in 1949, Jay E. Maeder, an industrial engineer from Cleveland, bought the lines and renamed the company Milwaukee Rapid Transit & Speedrail Co.