Maps of your city's historic trolley lines

[Rizzo]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

here's chicago's streetcar system in 1937. i've read that the total system length was ~500 miles, but it's always a little tricky to know exactly what that number included. the map combines street cars with the el and some bus routes, along with streetcar lines in the western burbs, so use the legend to find what's what.



source: http://chicagoinmaps.com/chicagostreetcars.html

Cool. I love it when I can see exposed tracks on occasion. Though I think the grand unions have all been ripped up.

[fflint]

San Francisco:

courtesy of eric fischer on flickr

Oakland and Berkeley, 1911.
These lines were eventually merged into a single entity, the "Key System."
SF-bound passengers transferred to ferries at the pier terminals until the Bay Bridge was built in 1937; after that, trains rolled over the bridge into SF's Transbay Terminal

courtesy of Bay Area Rails

[volguus zildrohar]

Philadelphia.

The subway-surface trolleys (dashed lines) and Route 15 still operate. The rest have all been replaced by buses.


July 4, 1967 Philadelphia Streetcar Map by davidwilson1949, on Flickr

[Mr Downtown]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

it really is amazing how many Ontario cities had tram networks. small cities like sarnia, peterborough, and cornwall had streetcar networks. there was even a rail line between woodstock and Ingersoll! (two towns of about 37,000 and 13,000)

The McGraw Electric Railway Directory for 1924 lists 955 electric railways in the United States and another 59 in Canada. (By 1975 there were only eight North American cities with streetcars.)

Interurbans (country trolleys, called radial railways in Canada) were the high-tech bubble of their day, and were often built between towns that couldn't justify the line even if the Model T had never been invented. Once it was, the end came pretty quickly for most.

[awholeparade]

Originally Posted by Hayward

Cool. I love it when I can see exposed tracks on occasion. Though I think the grand unions have all been ripped up.

I see this in Denver all the time, but it makes me have a different reaction.

[Centropolis]

i thought that i read somewhere that st louis had the largest transit system that didnt have rapid transit.

http://s3-media1.ak.yelpcdn.com/bpho...9_lsjr-A/l.jpg


http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3336/3...8a7a2c92_z.jpg

[San Frangelino]

Here's a map from Wikipedia showing the 20 lines of the Yellow Car that criss crossed Downtown LA and beyond. This is not to be confused with the Red Car.

From:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Railway

[LMich]

Detroit Department of Street Railways (DSR) - 1941


Detroit Transit History

1951


Walter P. Reuther Library

1955


Wayne State University


Jim Husing

[Inkoumori]

Brooklyn;



Thus the name "Dodger". You're welcome LA

[Inkoumori]

The Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Side, 1898, from the Museum of the City of New York collection.

[tdawg]

Atlanta's streetcar network in 1924 (public domain):



Here's a link to a beautiful 1940 map of Atlanta's old network: http://saportareport.com/wp-content/uploads/Atlanta-1940-Streetcar-Map.pdf

Plus a cool old photo from the AJC:

[photoLith]

In Houston I live just two blocks from one of the old streetcar lines. Such a shame they were all destroyed. Out of all of our streetcar lines that existed I've only seen a couple of blocks where you can see where the old tracks were. Almost all traces of our historic streetcar lines are gone. None of Houston's historic streetcars still exist either. They were all scrapped.

[Cro Burnham]

Originally Posted by volguus zildrohar

Philadelphia.

The subway-surface trolleys (dashed lines) and Route 15 still operate. The rest have all been replaced by buses.

This map from probably the 1940s shows by contrast to the 1960 map you posted how much the system was gutted in just those 15 or so years. essentially, there was a trolley on every numbered street back then:



Sorry, lost the original source of the scan.

[Fresh]

*sigh*





The Sydney tramway network once served Sydney, the capital city of New South Wales, Australia. In its heyday, it was the largest in Australia, the second largest in the Commonwealth (after London), and one of the largest in the world. It was extremely intensively worked, with about 1,600 cars in service at any one time at its peak during the 1930s (cf. about 500 trams in Melbourne today).

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, an average of more than one tram journey per day was made in Sydney by every man and woman, infant and child in the city. Patronage peaked in 1945 at 405 million passenger journeys. The system was in place from 1879 until its winding down in the 1950s and closure in 1961 (a single horse-car line operated from 1861 to 1866). It had a maximum street mileage of 181 miles (291 km), in 1923

[Fresh]

A major tram depot where a slightly more recognizable and important building now stands......

[vid]

Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay) was the first municipality in Canada to establish its own street car system in 1892. (Fort William had a private streetcar in 1891). So, Thunder Bay Transit (which the agency was renamed as when it absorbed Fort William Transit during our 1970 amalgamation) is the oldest municipally operated public transit agency in Canada.

The system was unified and split up several times over the years, with Fort William Street Railway being separated and absorbed various times by Port Arthur Street Railway, later Port Arthur Public Utilities Commission. The streetcars were powered by a dam build in the north end of the city, which created the lake that separated Current River from the urban fabric. Electric trolley buses were introduced in the 1930s, gas buses shortly after. The streetcars were last used in 1948. In 1972, the last of the electric trolleys was taken out of service. The city has two electric buses from Vancouver (but the same model as we used here, and like St. Louis our transit system's vehicles were built at a plant located in the city), which will be put on display at some location in the near future.

The main streetcar line has been called The Mainline since the 1800s, and it still operates roughly along that route today. It's the only bus route we never have to change when we reconfigure our transit system, since it is basically already in its most optimal layout. It only gets minor changes on its suburban ends.

[volguus zildrohar]

Originally Posted by Cro Burnham

This map from probably the 1940s shows by contrast to the 1960 map you posted how much the system was gutted in just those 15 or so years. essentially, there was a trolley on every numbered street back then:



Sorry, lost the original source of the scan.

Thanks for finding this, Cro. I knew that I've seen this one somewhere in the past.

[zilfondel]

Portland system from 1912:


source

This was when it was at its peak.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by vid

The city has two electric buses from Vancouver (but the same model as we used here, and like St. Louis our transit system's vehicles were built at a plant located in the city), which will be put on display at some location in the near future.

Yeah, but here in St. Louis was built everyone's (in the US...St Louis Car Company) streetscars. *snaps suspenders irrelevantly*

apparently they couldn't stay afloat just building subway cars for the MTA and folded in the 70s. there are still tons of heavy rail vehicles in service from the STLCC.

(EDIT, looks like tons of the STLCC subway cars are in the process of being scrapped and soon will be extinct )


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...x-R42_4811.JPG

[vid]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

Yeah, but here in St. Louis was built everyone's (in the US...St Louis Car Company) streetscars. *snaps suspenders irrelevantly*

Yeah we did that too. Canada Car and Foundry, now Bombardier. Most of Toronto's current rolling stock is still built here. Subways, streetcars and commuter calls all come out of Thunder Bay. (Plattsburgh New York installs the interiors, though.)

So while St. Louis cars are being scrapped, Thunder Bay's are still going, and operate all around the world.