Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti Street Railway

The following summer Charles Delemere Haines arrived in Ypsilanti and quickly determined that the city's population could not support its own streetcar system, but that an interurban between it and neighboring Ann Arbor, Michigan, would be viable.

Haines predicted that the system would handle 500 passengers daily; at that time trains operated by the Michigan Central Railroad between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti carried forty.

The reason for denial was that the original motive power of the line came not from semi-quiet electricity, but from a rattling and hissing steam locomotive—which had been covered in boards to disguise it as a wood-sided wagon, so that it would be less alarming to horses.

A battle royal would ensue with most of the participants eventually being dunked in the fountain just east of Welch Hall..."[3]Trains operated every ninety minutes, at an average speed of eight miles per hour.

An intermediate depot in the Mallets Creek Settlement in Pittsfield Township—a tiny building at the SW corner of Packard and Platt—later housed the municipal office of the short-lived City of East Ann Arbor from 1947 through 1956.

For years after the 1942 wartime scrap drives, it was believed that all of Ypsi's tracks had been removed, but in 2004 crews rebuilding a section of Washington Street found a stretch of rails buried under the pavement.