Born in La Porte, Indiana, George K. Bradley was raised on stories and recollections of the Northern Indiana Railway, the South Bend-based streetcar and interurban company which reached his home town. He recalls the interurban cars at La Porte and the city cars at South Bend. In 1953 a book on the Northern Indiana was his first publication. He was employed by Fort Wayne Transit, Inc. and later he served on the board of the Fort Wayne Public Transportation Corporation. In Fort Wayne he applied his indefatigable research talents to the history of the Indiana Service Corporation. One result was the book Fort Wayne and Wabash Valley Trolleys published in 1983 by CERA.
In between, George pursued other historical projects including research on the early development of North American electric railway traction. He is also interested in firefighting and is the author of the Fort Wayne's Fire Department 1839-1964 as well as a founder of the Fire Fighters Museum in Fort Wayne.
More recently, George authored the book, Indiana Railroad: The Magic Interurban, published in 1991 by CERA. The book is an exhaustive historical, political and financial study of that unique interurban system which, at its peak, boasted the largest number of route miles of all the interurban railway systems.
Since completion of the 1953 Northern Indiana Railway book, George continued to seek out more details of the company finding there was much more to the story than originally covered. CERA Bulletin 132, Northern Indiana Railway covers many previously not-chronicled details of the smaller city systems plus the building race between Northern Indiana and the South Shore Line from South Bend to Michigan City.
Mr. Bradley died in early 2000.
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