The Elgin and Belvidere Electric Company interurban line carried passengers and freight between Elgin and Belvidere for more than two decades after its completion in 1907, with connections at Belvidere to Rockford, Freeport, and Janesville and at Elgin to Aurora and Chicago. Its passenger locals stopped at crossroads and farmhouses, often taking children to school or picking up cans of fresh milk, earning the rural line the nickname "Dairy Route." Union became a favorite destination during Prohibition because its taverns never closed, and in 1915 it was also the site of the world's first automated electrical substation, which converted high-voltage transmission line AC to 600-volt DC for the line's overhead system. Competition from the new Grant Highway, U.S. 20, bus lines, increased private automobile ownership, better roads, and the Depression forced the E&B out of business, and all service ended in March 1930. By the early 1960s, the Illinois Electric Railway Museum had outgrown its original North Chicago location, and after considering sites near Joliet, Batavia, Union, and East Troy, Wisconsin, the renamed Illinois Railway Museum chose part of the abandoned E&B line between Union and Coyne Station Road and bought the right-of-way for back taxes, along with 20 acres of farmland on Olson Road for a permanent building and storage yard. In 1964 the museum's collection of 42 cars moved there, members laid more than a mile of track on the old right-of-way east of Union, electric passenger operations began in 1966, and the museum later expanded to more than 120 acres with over a dozen buildings, ten miles of operating and display track, and nearly 400 pieces of rolling stock.