After my recent posting on the bus system in Philadelphia a loyal reader asked me to share my recollection of the trolley system that preceded the buses prior to WWII. That is "trolley" as in street car as in Desire. The cars ran on steel wheels on steel rails that crisscrossed the city's grid system. The grinding sound of steel on steel turning a corner at 6AM could easily rouse one from sleep. Certainly not as soft as the clip-clop of the milkman's horse at about the same hour. Trolleys had a two man crew - the motorman or operator in the front who handled a set of levers and a crank handle to start, stop and control speed and the conductor who was stationed half way back with his coin changer and punch who collected fares which back then were two tokens for fifteen cents. For one fare you could ride trolley-subway-trolley with a series of transfer tickets duly punched by the uniformed conductor. The power to operate came from overhead wires which were strung out throughout the city's streets. A pole attached to the rear of the car reached up to touch the wire. In the spring when college students grew restless they might surround a car filled with passengers, pull the pole off the wire and immobilize the trolley similar to the flash mobs we read about today. As the cars had no maneuverability they could also be brought to a standstill by an idle truck blocking the tracks and with some lines running for fifteen miles round trip it was difficult to maintain schedule. They say that the Japanese made the subways run on time and that Mussolini did likewise with the trains but you could never succeed with the trolley system circa 1940. All aboard!
tjs
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Very interesting! There were trolley cars in my Houston neighborhood during that time and my grandfather was a trolley car operator in El Paso, Texas for many years. Just read that they may clean up the old cars and start running them from downtown to UT El Paso again. Judy Graves
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