Trolley Tales
At the Northern Ohio Railway Museum, we believe history is meant to be experienced, not just studied. Trolley Tales is our digital gallery of stories, photos, and research dedicated to the rail lines that once connected our communities. From the technical details to the memories of passengers who rode them, these tales are your gateway to Ohio’s rich railway legacy. We invite you to explore the archives here, and then visit us in Seville to see these historic treasures in person.
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Running the Car
How did the motorman make the car go? We know that electric power, received through the trolley pole or other pick-up arrangements was transmitted to the motors. On direct current motors, the speed of the car is a function of how much of that power reaches the motors. The standard arrangement of power control, for…
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Handbrake
The introduction of electric power greatly increased the ability to move a vehicle. But, don’t you know, it also was necessary to make it stop – and to do so when and where desired. Because steam railroads had been operating for a number of years before street railways became common, braking systems had been developed…
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Fare Collection 2
Last week, we discussed early fare collection methods and the problem of ensuring that all fares were received and passed on to the company. In response to this concern, increasingly elaborate fare collection devices were developed, by a large number of manufacturers. Initially, these boxes included just a slot for depositing a fare, a visible…
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Fare Collection I
In the days of horse cars and the early electrics, fares were collected in the same way they had been collected on the steam railroads. Passengers boarded the car and the conductor moved through the car collecting fares. Although this arrangement worked well for the steam roads on which there usually was considerable time between…
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Trolley Rule Books
In order to operate efficiently and safely, trolley companies adopted procedures and rules to guide employees in performing their duties. The American Street Railway Association developed an extensive set of recommended rules based on experience, and many companies based their own rules on these recommendations, modified according to the individual companies’ needs. They printed these…
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Buses
This post may seem sacrilegious for an electric railway site, but the development of buses is an important, if sad, part of the electric railway story. We’ve previously discussed how gasoline-powered buses gradually replaced trolleys and, eventually, largely eliminated them. When did this process begin and how rapidly did it progress? A very early introduction…
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Hose Jumper
Here’s something that once played a significant, if occasional, part in trolley operation. Consider what happens if there is a major fire such that fire hoses have to be run across a street. Nowadays, the street is simply closed off and traffic is routed around. That flexibility of routing is – we rather hate to…
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The History of Traffic Jams: Why Streetcars Vanished from Ohio Streets
Before modern highways, Ohio cities like Akron relied on electric streetcars. This post explores how the rise of the automobile turned our streets into traffic jams and led to the end of the trolley era. “Get that trolley out of MY way!” Even in the first half of the 19th Century, some American city streets…
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The Great Railway Boom: How Electric Trains Built America’s Cities (1890–1902)
Growth Rate: The last years of the 19th Century and the first years of the 20th was a time of rapid growth for the US, with the population sometimes increasing by more than 20% per decade. Much of this growth occurred in urban areas such that, by the tine of World War I, half of…
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Was the World’s First Articulated Trolley Invented in Cleveland?
Previously, we have discussed ways in which Cleveland was a pioneer in the development of electric lights and electric railways. It was the first city to have electric street lights, in 1879, with Charles Brush’s arc lights around Public Square, and it was the first city to have a commercial electric street railway when Edward…
