the incredible private subway car of August Belmont Jr., the financier for the first subway line in New York City at the Shore Line Trolley Museum in Connecticut.
The type of streetcar, known as a reversible horse car, could actually rotate 360 degrees on its undercarriage utilizing a single pin, so when the trolley needed to go in the reverse direction along the rails, the horse and the cab would just rotate around.
An absolute MUST VISIT experience if you are in The New Haven, CT area. Fur for adults and children. Picnic areas are available. Yes, you are allowed to since The Trolley Song while riding along. Interurban trolleys are presented. At one time one could travel from New Haven to Richmond, Virginia by trolley! You alit at the end of one railhead (line) and walked to the next railhead. I did not say that this is rapid transit! August Belmont's monument underground still has a very busy set of tracks called the Shuttle that runs between Times Square and Lexington Avenue as part of what used to be called the IRT. Belmont had the line build so that he could travel from his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to his office near Lexington Avenue. The shuttle runs under 42nd Street. Of note, from the Times Square Station you can see the track as it curves slightly westward and then northward to join the first of the IRT lines, which runs under Broadway and had opened in 1904. Belmont Race Track at the border of the Borough of Queens and The County of Nassau was also his. August Belmont was part of The Gilded Age.
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