interesting memorial to public service streetcar tracks, Haddonfield, NJ

These tracks were found when the street was reconstructed. I worked on this project. The town put this in to commemorate the tracks.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=122194145078558259&set=gm.26076364991970336&idorvanity=120835437949980

horse-drawn streetcars at the Ridge Avenue depot in Philly

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1620299824697684&set=gm.2014189662129036

ever heard of the Pittsburgh trolleys that were painted in a wide variety of advertising and marketing themes? They were made obsolete in the 70's by GM's bus scam. One's been restored, and it's origin story, is due to a 9 yr old girl's letter to the mayor

A nearly-completed Express Boat emerges from the TCRT streetcar shop in South Minneapolis in the spring of 1906.

 The Twin City Rapid Transit Company once operated streetcar boats to transport passengers around Lake Minnetonka. Faster commuting on the lake than around it, to get people from their homes and neighborhoods to work of the city, resulted in the ferries being nicknamed "streetcar boats." 

Parts for the new boats were cut at Moore Boat Works in Wayzata in late 1905, but Moore’s facility was not large enough to accommodate the assembly process. So, the parts were sent to the TCRT streetcar shop at 31st and Nicollet in South Minneapolis for assembly. 

One by one, the nearly-completed boats emerged from the Minneapolis facility on special wheelsets in the spring of 1906. From there, they were transported over the streetcar tracks to Excelsior and launched into Lake Minnetonka. 

Officially known as Express Boats, they were steam-powered waterborne vessels with designs reminiscent of the streetcars of the day. The boats operated between communities on Lake Minnetonka, but improved roads in that area hit ridership hard in the 1920s.

Commuters who lived or worked on Lake Minnetonka in the early 1900s could ride the streetcar boats to 26-27 landings around the lake and could even be picked up or dropped off at private docks if conditions permitted. Most commuters connected to land-based streetcars in Excelsior, but they could also connect to streetcars in Deephaven (starting in 1906) and in Tonka Bay (starting in 1908). Further yet, they could connect to Great Northern Railway trains in Wayzata and Spring Park.

The Express Boats proved to be viable with annual ridership consistently reported above 200,000. They became a beloved staple of the Lake Minnetonka community, earning several nicknames over the years such as “Yellow Jackets” and the very popular term “streetcar boats.”

 Ultimately, seven were built, but most of them were scuttled in the lake in 1926.

With some of the streetcar boats already out of service, TCRT made the decision to suspend all steamboat service on Lake Minnetonka at the conclusion of the 1926 season. In an effort to dispose of the vessels, TCRT put the streetcar boats up for sale that year but were only successful in selling one, the Hopkins, which went on to live as an excursion boat until 1949. With no other buyers in sight, TCRT decided to scuttle (purposely sink) three of the streetcar boats in July 1926 – an acceptable form of disposal at that time. The scuttled vessels included the Como, White Bear, and Minnehaha. Stripped of their superstructures and machinery, the boats were towed out to deep water north of Big Island and pumped full of water. One by one, they slipped below the waves to their watery graves.

 In this map from 1907, electric streetcar lines are shown as black lines and steamboat routes are shown as red dashes. 

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1145228370302340&set=a.649840399841142
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_City_Rapid_Transit_Company

https://streets.mn/2021/11/08/when-the-twin-cities-had-streetcar-boats/

I learned that a 1904 Red Pacific Electric Car is the original beginning, and still part of, the Formosa Diner in Hollywood

While reading "Stay Interesting" the autobiography of Jonathan Goldsmith, famous for portraying the Dos Equis "World's Most Interesting Man" he mentions stopping in here frequently in the 60s or 70s

https://theformosacafe.com/

https://www.instagram.com/theformosa/

Wow, it's exceptionally rare to find a photo of an old trolley car used as a house, especially out in the forest

http://www.photogallerynyc.com/jx5jvvltmlikw18drb0x2ymy2g6gzm

trolley car postcards

http://buttes-chaumont.blogspot.com/2020/02/postcard-of-day-no-97-trolley-to-shore.html

A streetcar named Desire

“New Orleans, June 15, 1957 – on the same day that I took the Canal Street photo pictured here, my goal was to find a streetcar that still retained the destination for the Desire line, made famous by playwright Tennessee Williams.

“In 1957 the Desire line had used buses for almost 10 years, but I approached the operators on their break at the foot of the Canal Ferry loop and asked them if they could roll the destination sign to ‘Desire’ to allow me a photo shoot. The first three or four cars only contained signs for the two remaining streetcar lines, Canal and St. Charles. Then on about the fifth try, bingo, Car 910’s signs still had the full complement of abandoned streetcar lines, so the kindly motorman set it for Desire and continued on his rest break until I had completed my photographic endeavor.”

35mm Kodachrome image and quoted text by William D. Volkmer from his post in the members gallery at shorpy.com

https://route22ny.tumblr.com/post/186572922658/new-orleans-june-15-1957-on-the-same-day-that

National car passing streetcars on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1913

https://onceuponatown.tumblr.com/post/127827275310/national-car-passing-streetcars-on-the-brooklyn

Gandy dancers and gross polluters, the killers of the street cars

image from http://latimespast.tumblr.com/post/96562548684/the-planned-downtown-l-a-streetcar-is-back-in-the

the federal government sued  the consortium of General Motors, Standard Oil, Firestone Tire and Rubber, Phillips Petroleum, and Mack Truck Manufacturing Co. for conspiring to deep-six the region's streetcars.

Most historians agree that GM and the other mega-companies only helped to speed the end of the railway, which already was deep into red ink.

World War II's shortages of gasoline and rubber crippled bus service. By the end of the war, the trolley lines were decrepit, obsolete and deep in the red. Some Angelenos purchased the trolleys from scrap dealers, moved them to vacant lots and began living in them during the city's housing shortage.

In 1945,  American City Lines, a subsidiary of National City Lines, a Chicago-based company whose investors included General Motors and other big oil and rubber interests, bought the remaining electric streetcar line in LA.

National City Lines soon controlled 46 transit networks in the Midwest and West. The company began scrapping these electric systems and replacing them with diesel buses that -- surprise -- used fuel and rubber.

By 1946, the Justice Department had caught on. It filed an antitrust suit against National City Lines for conspiracy to monopolize the transit industry. But before the suit came to trial in Chicago, the consortium of big companies bailed out, selling their holdings in National City Lines. That essentially left it as an empty corporation.

In 1949, the case finally came to trial. The verdict was mixed, with acquittals and convictions. Although they no longer owned National City Lines, the companies in the consortium were fined wrist-slapping amounts of $5,000 each, while individual company officials were fined $1 each, for a total of $37,007. By then, the far-flung suburbs were crisscrossed by cars, highways and a few freeways, and the so-called conspiracy plot simply applied the coup de grace to a dying system.

http://www.latimes.com/me-2003-los-angeles-streetcar-history-story.html#page=1

LA, 1943  http://latimespast.tumblr.com/post/81704529173/downtown-los-angeles-70-years-ago-this-is-the

something went wrong to put this streetcar on the sidewalk

Found on https://www.facebook.com/pages/J-S-Antique-Auto/390661317759433