Trolley Tales
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More Carbarns
Last week we looked at the car barns of Cleveland after the formation of Cleveland Railway. Of course, all trolley systems needed barns and maintenance facilities. Here are a few more city facilities located in Northern Ohio. Akron’s Northern Ohio Traction & Light, later Akron Transportation Company’s Kenmore barns and shop was a major operation.…
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Cleveland Car Barns
Or Car Houses or Operating Stations, if you prefer: As with all trolley systems, those in Cleveland needed places to store and maintain their fleets of cars and, as with all large cities, Cleveland had a considerable number of them over the years, with each of the several companies of early days having one or…
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A Progressive Small Town
Many smaller Ohio towns built local trolley lines in the early days, but possibly the smallest was Salem. Remarkably, it also was one of the earliest cities in the entire country to adopt electric cars, beginning service on 23 May, 1890. At that time, the population was only 5,780! The car fleet consisted of three…
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Construction vs Operation
As with any business, the lower the costs of operating an electric railway the greater the likelihood that it would be profitable. Thus, debt load lowered profitability. As we noted last week, sometimes a line was “overcapitalized,” that is it had taken on more debt than its income could cover. Overcapitalization could occur for a…
