Trolley Tales
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The Electric Railway Journal
The Electric Railway Journal: In 1884, McGraw Hill began weekly publication of the Street Railway Journal, a trade periodical for the mostly horse-drawn street railways that had proliferated in the US and Canada by that time. From the start, it included information and discussion of a vast range of concerns, including care of horses, track…
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American Street Railway Association
The American Street Railway Association was first organized in Boston on 12 Dec, 1882, as trade organization to discuss problems associated, initially with the operation of horse drawn streetcars including such matters as the care of horses and the cost of feed. As electric traction started to become common, that also became a focus, with…
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The Rapid Acceptance of Electric Railways
Picture: Cleveland’s Broadway & Newburgh Street Ry #51, Columbus Metropolitan Library. Primitive as Victorian era trolleys may seem to us today, in their time they were the product of cutting edge technology. Consider what was being accomplished. The earliest understanding of electricity as a moving current was only about a century old, and it was…
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Where could you go by trolley?
In previous posts we have discussed the interurban railways and how extensive a network they formed in some parts of the country. In practical terms, just how wide was that network? From Northern Ohio, where could the cars take you? Northern Ohio had a network such that you could reach any of the area’s cities…
