Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Streetcars or trolley(car)s (American English for the European word tram) were once the chief mode of public transit in hundreds of North American cities and towns. Most of the original urban streetcar systems were either dismantled in the mid-20th century or converted to other modes of operation, such as light rail.
Public transportation began in Washington, D.C., almost as soon as the city was founded. In May 1800, two-horse stage coaches began running twice daily from Bridge and High Streets NW (now Wisconsin Avenue and M Street NW) in Georgetown by way of M Street NW and Pennsylvania Avenue NW/SE to William Tunnicliff's Tavern at the site now occupied by the Supreme Court Building.
A streetcar suburb is a residential community whose growth and development was strongly shaped by the use of streetcar lines as a primary means of transportation. Such suburbs developed in the United States in the years before the automobile, when the introduction of the electric trolley or streetcar allowed the nation’s burgeoning middle class to move beyond the central city’s borders. [1]
The history of trams, streetcars, or trolleys began in the early nineteenth century. It can be divided up into several discrete periods defined by the principal means of motive power used. [ 2 ] Eventually the so-called US "street railways" were deemed advantageous auxiliaries of the new elevated and/or tunneled metropolitan steam railways.
Eureka, California supported a series of street railways in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The history of the city's streetcars can be largely separated into a few eras distinguished by ownership: a horsecar company built the first lines, after a pause electrified service ran operated via a new company, then the system was under municipal ownership until abandonment.
The Swansea and Mumbles Railway ran the world's first passenger tram service in 1807. The horse-drawn tram (horsecar) was an early form of public rail transport, which developed out of industrial haulage routes that had long been in existence, and from the omnibus routes that first ran on public streets in the 1820s [citation needed], using the newly improved iron or steel rail or 'tramway'.
Streetcars in St. Louis, Missouri, operated as part of the transportation network of St. Louis from the middle of the 19th century through the early 1960s. During the first forty years of the streetcar in the city, a variety of private companies operated several dozen lines.
The Chicago Surface Lines was primarily a trolley operation, with approximately 3100 streetcars on the roster at the time of the CTA takeover. [16] It purchased small lots of motor buses, [17] totaling 693 at the time of the CTA takeover, mostly consisting of smaller buses used on extension routes or to replace two-man streetcars on routes such as Hegewisch and 111th Street, because conductors ...