It Happened Here --"Clang, Clang, Clang Went The Trolley"

The Trolley cars of my childhood imagination, and the impression of trolley cars from my very limited experience with Trolley cars from driving around  Boston in the 1970's, differed greatly from each other.  Neither one of them reflected the reality of trolley car  transportation in the approximately  six and one half decades that trolleys flourished in and between  cities in New York State from 1888 until after WWII.  (Approximately 30 larger cities still operate  trolleys [1]   in the United States, though none are in New York State.) The trolleys of my imagination were small and ramshackle, piloted/conducted by  uniformed, officious employees of  local transit companies who could not be more taken with themselves than if  they were the captains of  the great ships of the White Star or  Cunard Lines.[2]   Less than serious transportation, in theater and movies, they, with SanFrancisco's cable cars,  appeared as backdrops /sets for musical productions. (Think:  Judy Garland's "The Trolley Song"or Tony Bennet's  "San Francisco"--"where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars" ). The only tangible contact I had with trolley cars was on shopping trips with my mother.  When transversing  the Belgian block paved city streets of Albany  we would come upon the sunken rails of the trolley line, surviving in the street like the fossilized footprints of some long extinct dinosaurs . And I still remember my mother cautioning me that stepping in them  would surely lead to a twisted ankle.  In contrast, the trolleys of Boston seemed like huge orange or green behemoths,  trundling down the middle of avenues,  their tracks making great sweeping curves through the very centers of intersections, somehow sublimely confident that all other vehicular traffic would yield to them. This was in spite of the fact that most of them, like aging pachyderms, bore the scars of combat  with lesser motor vehicles.

Horse drawn streetcars appeared first, at the beginnings of the industrial revolution with the need for workers to get  to and from their homes to their workplaces in a regular and timely fashion. Few workers could afford the expense of a horse  w/ carriage to say nothing of stabling/caring for said horse the hours they worked. As factories and cities grew, housing became displaced to ever greater distances from workplaces. As distances between home and work grew from feet to miles, then many miles, taking "shanks mare" (walking) became impracticable. Placing omnibuses on rails buried in the streets allowed horses to pull much greater loads of passengers than possible on the rough and usually rutted surfaces of roads.  

By 1832 New York City had its first horse drawn street cars, of the New York and Harlem Railroad.  By 1855 horse car rails would snake through most NYC neighborhoods and NYC streetcars would provide 18 million rides per year!  By 1859 Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago,  Pittsburgh and Cincinnati had horse trolleys and many other cities would follow.   Two horse streetcars that could carry perhaps a couple dozen passengers and the smaller 1 horse "bob-tail" cars [3]  carrying around a dozen riders were becoming common.

Horse drawn streetcars, however, were expensive to operate, and could go only 5 to 6 miles per hour. One two horse car, operating on a  busy line for six long days a week,  might utilize five to ten horses. [4] And for  the horses, trolley car service was extremely taxing with trolley horses typically having only a three to five year working life!   And then, of course, there was the manure.  A trolley horse might produce 10 1/2 lbs. per day. But this could have some value. One trolley company with $40,000 in fares/year reported $14,000/year in manure sales to farmers.  Additionally, as with any living creature,  there is the risk of disease.  In 1872  an epidemic of epizotic apthinae killed thousands of horses.

Not surprisingly, very early on, inventors and entrepreneurs began looking for alternatives ways to power  trolleys.  Andrew Hallidae, a wire rope manufacture from San Francisco developed the first successful urban cable car system after he witnessed an accident in which four horses attempting to pull a street car up one of SanFrancisco's infamous hills, lost their footing and were dragged by their runaway car over the rough cobblestones to the base of the hill. (All four animals had to be destroyed.)  Hallidae's system involved a continuous moving cable (wire rope) in a channel running below the surface of the streets, supported on rollers and directed around corners by large pulleys, all powered by a central steam plant. The "cable  cars" utilized a gripping mechanism that extended down into the channel, locking and unlocking the car onto/ from  the continuously moving cable.

Small steam powered tractors were tried on some lines. Often concealed to look like streetcars themselves, in part to frighten horses less, these "steam dummies" still were noisy, producing clouds of steam, smoke and cinders but were used on some suburban lines with  fewer stops.

Electricity, however,  provided the most promise for trolley car propulsion in the fourth quarter of the 19th century.  For over two decades inventors in the U.S., Germany and England made steady improvements in electric motors, undercarriages, and current collection devices. By 1888 Frank J. Sprague had developed a car and electrification system for Richmond Virginia that became the model for trolley car systems across the nation, not only within, but between towns.

 In most areas where rails were accessible to pedestrians horses and other animals, electrified 3d or "hot" rails quickly and often disastrously proved impractical, though they became standard in subways and along some stretches of protected elevated urban railroads. Overhead power, through a system of electrified wires quickly became the safer norm.

                      The Albany-Hudson line persevered with 3d rail power, except in high traffic areas. despite accidents

                                            Remains of  the overhead electric system on Hamilton St., Albany

Leo Daft, an electrical engineer, working in the field of electrical distribution/ trolley propulsion built a    1 1/2 mile demonstration electric railway in Saratoga but was better known for a  four wheeled device sliding along the overhead-suspended electric wire was known as a "troller".  Pulled along by the streetcar, it took current  directly from the wire for the car's electric motors.  The term "trolley car " became synonymous with any streetcar wether horse-drawn, steam or electric propelled.  Unfortunately, troller wheels had some propensity to jam or jump free of the electric wires they travelled along and then the troller could unexpectedly come crashing down on their streetcars.  The solution was  one or two flexible poles, spring loaded, mounted on each car.   At the top of the pole was a wheel held onto the wire by the spring tension of the pole, that made contact as it ran along the underside of the electrical power wire. 

Almost overnight, cities large and small began contracting with entrepreneurs to build trolley systems. With electric propulsion, the price of operating a car/mile dropped from $0.25 to $0.15 car/mile, and unlike with cable car systems there was not the huge upfront cost of building a large steam power plant and extensive underground facilities to enable a continuous cable to travel in an unending loop.  Cities could charge trolley car companies for the franchise to run their cars along city streets, often requiring them to pave and maintain the streets on which they operated.  Real estate developers often courted trolley car companies to build lines adjacent to properties they were developing because access to  the city's trolley car system could multiply their properties' value.  Fairly extensive trolley systems could be operated by small electric generating plants located on small streams or rivers running through cities, or powered by steam engines.

Industrialization resulted not only in standardization of working times but also the standardization 

of non-working times, which resulted in both a problem and an opportunity for trolley companies.  

One day a week, Sundays, (and soon two days a week) trolley cars ran mostly empty. To fill these ridership voids trolley companies began to develop routes to popular recreational destinations like

 beaches and parks. To enhance the attraction of these destinations they combined with civic 

authorities and private entrepreneursto build bandstands, concert halls, dance halls, ball fields, 

racetracks and casinos.  The success of Mr. Ferris' giant wheel at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893

sparked the creation of a variety of "thrill" rides as well. Electrification of these parks,  (necessary 

for trolley operation) allowed for the entertainments to continue after dark, with festive colored 

lighting.  In many areas the local trolley company, itself, created a "Trolley Park" where a person 

could buy, for the price of a trolley fare, a full day's amusement.

From Albany Hudson Electric Trail signs at the Electric Park

site, Niverville, off Rte 203

I

 As urban congestion increased, larger cities looked for alternatives to the rail-bound, street level trolleys.  Elevated railways reduced street congestion and with the introduction of electric engines, eliminated the smoke and cinders associated with steam trains. With other large east coast cities, New York City would develop an extensive subway system.  To facilitate the flow of traffic, some trolley companies experimented with rubber tired cars, trolleybuses, that, though still tethered to the overhead electric grid,  no longer rode on steel rails and could maneuver (somewhat) through traffic, letting passengers safely off at the curb.

The twentieth century saw a number of developments that would remove trolleys from all but a few cities by mid-century.

Rising costs doomed many trolley systems for while the price of maintaining rails, the overhead electrical system, replacement cars and parts, and labor continued to rise, the price of fares did not, often frozen in initial franchise agreements with municipalities.  Labor unrest over static wages was a frequent problem.  In Albany, in 1901 and 1921 strikes against the United Traction Company became violent.  In 1901 two strikers were killed byNational Guardsmen called in to protect strikebreakers operating the cars. [4]  Even when not prohibited by franchises with municipalities, fare increases were immensely unpopular with the public.  Early on, the 5 cent fare had become sacrosanct.  

The main reason for the decline of the trolley, of course, was the proliferation of gasoline powered automobiles, vans and buses.  Automobiles offered a flexibility that trolleys could not compete against. Suburban areas expanded beyond the profitable range of streetcars.  Beginning in 1910 economic down turns encouraged some automobile owners to turn to the cities to solicit rides for a fare.  So called "jitney" cars became an urban phenomenon, not offering scheduled service, but skimming ridership away from trolley runs at the most profitable  peak times.  ("Jitney" is thought to have originated in New Orleans, a corruption of the creole word  "jetnee" or "nickel" referring to the common fare at the time.)  By a second downturn in 1914-15 between 6000 and 10,000 "jitneys" may have been operating in the U.S. .   Car companies were abetting them by offer larger multi-seated vehicles and small busses.  While jitney cab popularity would ebb and flow with economic conditions, efforts of municipalities to regulate/license these independents,  and labor disruptions, the effects were inevitable.

The Second World War provided a reprieve for the Trolley industry with people flocking to U.S. cities to work in war industries, and with automobile production halted and gasoline severely rationed.  But by mid-century the end was clear.[5]   Car manufacturers were cranking out thousands of new cars, and Americans were addicted to the freedom and independence of personal transportation.  Mass transit  would continue but gasoline powered busses would replace trolley cars.

[1] To be clear, by Trolleys I mean electric surface passenger trains that run on electric motors and get their power off of overhead wires, or occasionally from a third rail.

[2] This meme appears to have developed from a syndicated cartoon "The Toonerville Trolley that Meets All Trains" that ran from 1908 to 1955 in newspapers across the country.

[3] The horses of one horse trolleys were often hitched closer the streetcar itself, so their tails were often cut/bobbed to avoid them being tangled in the front grills of the trolley or whip in the faces of the drivers.

[4] By 1885 Albany's trolley system had 30 miles of track,  71 horse-drawn trolley cars, and 400  horses to draw them!

[5] The last trolley ran in Albany in August 1946

--An encyclopedic overview of the trolley in America and worldwide, with simple and clear explanations of trolley technology is provided in William T. Middleton.  Time of the Trolley. Milwaukee, 1967. 

 --A short history of Albany's United Traction Co. can be found at friendsofalbanyhistory.wordpress.com/tag/united-traction-co,/.   Friends of Albany.  "Getting from Here to There in Old Albany:  It was all about the Trolley". April 8, 2018. )

--The Albany-Hudson Electric Trail has numerous tablet-signs that are very informative, featuring prints of old photographs, etchings snd postcards along the trail, usually within 200 feet of where the trail crosses a road in Stottsville, Stockport, Stuyvesant Falls,  Kinderhook, Valatie, Niverville, N.Chatham and Nassau.

Marker of the Week  Fortnight (!)-- Proof!

                                                           "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day"

                                                          :)