@7\25\= |S3S in Bonner and also served the Coldstream Cereal Company through the mid-fifties. The Lone Star Cement Plant proved to be the life blood of this dying line as the remnant of the Kaw Valley system served this facility until the fall of 19€1 when operations were ceased for good, The Kaw Valley Railroad sold it's bus line to the Kansas Trails bus line in 1956. In 1955, the old right of way between Bonner Springs and Lawrence was sold in several parts to the Kansas Highway Commission for widening and reouilding of the Kansas Highway 32. Long after the final demise of this last electric line in Kansas, there exist several reminders of this lines past existence. At Lawrence, the Union bus Depot is housed in the former depot of the Kaw Valley. [wo miles northeast of Lawrence, there still stands two great concrete piers where the Kaw Valley crossed both the Union Facific Railroad and bud Creek. In Linwood, the big bridge Stranger Creek“still stands and is used as a bridge for a dirt road, tonner Springs still shows a couple of the old siding tracks now used by the Union Fac-_ ific and also a brown-brick shanty that once was part of the Kaw Valley. Finally, in Kansas City, Kansas there is the Kaw Valley bridge that first separated it from the tracks of the Kansas public Service System. That bridge is now used by the Kansas City Southern as a transfer point to the Union Pacific and Rock Island yards. though also dismantled in the end, the Kansas City, Kaw Valley & Western failroad was a sibessful electric line for many of it's fifty-four years of existence. transportation changes and economic factors played against the con- tinued success of this line as it did against all such operations. cut the line did reach farther westward than it's other competitors did and struggled to maintain service as long as it could. When financial difficulties proved to severe, it too had to cease as an integral part of our transportation mean, Our state and country is the worse off for the disappearance of these lines as the personal touches and caring they represented have long been sacrificed for the speed and quanity our present day society demands,