Trolley Car Treasury
Tomorrow the American trolley car will live only in the memories of the millions who rode and loved her. Here is a gay tribute to the time of the trolley and the complete story, in 300 photographs and 60,000 words, of a century of American streetcars.
This handsome and colorful book presents a wealth of trolley tales, songs, photographs, and cartoons that recapture the happy screech, clang, and hiss of the trolley. Here are the first horsecars, and all the nostalgic lore which attended the purchase of streetcar horses. New York's Third Avenue Line, which kept 1700 horses in its stable, had a preference for grays on the theory that they were apt to mind the heat least. Mules were preferred on some lines, especially in the South, since they ate less, cost less, and minded the heat less.
Frank Rowsome has assembled all the lore of the quaint and popular cable car which San Francisco was the first to have and the last to relinquish. Often converted horsecars, the first electric trolleys were considered by the public to be dangerous when it rained.
Men handed their pocket watches to their stay-behind womenfolk before boarding be-cause the powerful electric current flowing invisibly about a car might magnetize them. But timidity soon turned to genuine affection and the Golden Age of the trolley began. Majestic interurbans, boasting speeds of 70 miles per hour and complete with parlor cars and diners, almost spanned the country, and the ever-present city streetcar shaped communities and carried generations of pleasure-seeking Americans to Electric Park at the end of the line, the ball game, the zoo, the circus, and the beach.
The magnificent private cars of the trolley tycoons are here, along with Toonerville trolleys, trolley hearses, and such entertaining oddities as trolleys that ran under water, on compressed air, on a single rail, another pushed along by a skin wheel with horseshoes, and a trolley battleship. The great and once well-known developers of the trolley are given their due - pioneers like Daft, Van Depoele, and Sprague.
Threatened by the gasoline age and sudden competition from the automobile, the trolley world made one last stand in defense of its colorful domain the Birney and the P.C.C. cars boasted low-cost, efficiency developments that sought to keep the American trolley car on the streets. But, in the end, to no avail. Tomorrow the American trolley car will exist only in the minds of those who loved her.
Frank Rowsome brings vividly and authentically to life this colorful, passing age in American history. He tells the complete story of the American streetcar's century, from its quaint horsecar beginnings before the Civil War to its sad disappearance tomorrow. To whole generations, the streetcar was not merely a mode of transportation but a way of life. Thousands will be delighted by the way in which Frank Rowsome has captured the flavor and the substance of trolley-car days.
Hardback with dust jacket, 21x28cm, 200 pages, over 300 black & white photographs
Condition: Good/Very Good
ISBN: 9781844256518
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Updated: 7 April 2025