Trolley Thursday 9/24/20 - The Hershey Transit Company

If there's anything to take comfort in nowadays, it's a nice, creamy chocolate bar. There's plenty of brands to choose as well: if you're in the Bay Area, you go for the classic squares of Ghirardelli; if you're on a Swiss tram, you enjoy a fine Lindt truffle, and if you're in Pennsylvania, you grab a bar or a cup and hop on board Milton Hershey's very own trolley company! From 1903 to 1946, the Hershey Transit Company served employees and citizens alike in Hummelstown, Campbelltown, and every point inbetween, and it's still the only trolley company ever owned by a chocolate factory. On today's Trolley Thursday, let's unwrap the history and the nostalgia of the Hershey Transit Company

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Streetcars Start Some Sweet Business 

Derry's Pennsylvania Railroad Station, and the town, in 1900.
(Public Domain)

Milton Hershey, the tastiest
moustache in street railways.
(Public Domain)

The region of Derry Township is known for its dairy farms (no, it's not a pun. I think...) and its high-quality milk products. This led Milton Hershey, a proud native son of Derry, to reinvest in what was at that point a struggling farm community without electricity, roads, or adequate transit between nearby towns. Deciding that his hometown would be the spot for his new chocolate plant (as his business had been booming since 1900), Hershey threw large sums of money into the town's infrastructure. One of these new works projects was the construction of the Hummelstown & Campbelltown Street Railway (H&C) which was chartered in January 1903 (predating the new factory by a few months. The intent was to connect the two nearest towns to the chocolate factory, along with connecting at dairy farms along the 12-mile route.

A November 20, 1903
Harrisburg Telegraph
announces the construction
of the H&C.
(Newspapers.com)

The H&C opened on October 15, 1904, with the first streetcar bound for Derry Church via Palmyra and through to Campbelltown. Workers began using the streetcar to ride through to the factory, and combination trolleys laden with tanks of milk busily zipped in and out of the company gates. A year after opening, the line was extended all the way into Hummelstown proper where passengers could change cars and ride all the way to Harrisburg by streetcar. Mr. Hershey was very proud of his streetcar, treating it more like a train set than a legitimate public transit service. The subsidizing of operations through the chocolate factory and a permanent 5-cent fare meant the service was accessible to employees and citizens alike. When asked later on, Mr. Hershey said he later wanted to build his own full-sized railroad, but perhaps this was said in jest.

One of the biggest draws to the H&C (and the later Hershey Transit Company) was the creation of Hershey Park. Opened in 1906, the grand trolley park was born out of a pavilion overlooking a new bridge over Spring Creek, and this pavilion eventually grew into a baseball field, a track, and grandstands. The first rides were added in 1908 with a Merry-Go-Round and a miniature railroad soon after, with the first roller coaster arriving in 1923. According to Harrisburg Native, Alma Payne Bobb,

I remember coming to Hershey Park, it must have been the very early days. I was in junior high school in Harrisburg, and it was the custom, every spring, for a class outing. The classes would come down to Hershey Park, and we would ride the old trolley cars from Harrisburg to Hummelstown. Then we would change cars to the center of Hershey. It used to be between the bank and the Cocoa Inn. Then we would walk over to the park.

A pastoral scene at Hershey Park's baseball field, before the amusement park.
(AllPointsBidorBuy)

Workers gather outside the Hershey trolleys out to
Palmyra and an unidentified destination, eager to
commute home, 1925.
(Hershey Community Archives)

The public was enamored with Milton Hershey's business-philanthropism, and it wasn't just through trolley parks. Starting in the 1910s, the streetcars began running "picnic specials" where cars from Harrisburg, Lebanon, and Lancaster could run on the H&C tracks and connect through to Hershey Park. At points, special "basket cars" were permitted to run in streetcar consists, packed to the gills with box lunches and family baskets to serve to the day-trippers. For access to Hershey Park, a free shuttle service was provided using an old "Toonerville Trolley" four-wheeled car running from the meeting point at Hershey Square to the park gates. As an added bonus, the original carbarn opened up the Hershey Café on October 26, 1910, providing employees (and later the public) with good coffee and cocoa for their day.

In an undated color photo, Car No. 11 stops at the Hershey Hotel.
The green and cream color scheme was quite an attractive wrapper.
(Robert Konsbruck)

The Great Hershey Merger

A Hershey Transit
Company time-table
from 1942.
(Wanfried.com)

Barely three years into operation, however, the Hummelstown & Campbelltown was getting crowded. A whole host of streetcar companies emerged to connect the other outlying communities around Derry Township, including the Deodate & Hershey, Elizabethtown & Deodate, Lebanon & Campbelltown, and the Pennsylvania Traction Company (which you can learn about when you click on the "Lancaster" above). On December 13, 1913, Mr. Hershey oversaw the mass-merger of the surrounding trolley lines into the new Hershey Transit Company (HTCo). The entire system now spanned a healthy 35 miles across Dauphin County while the streetcar fleet remained at a healthy 30 cars, and while it primarily started as company transit, its connections to Harrisburg and other townships made the HTCo a worthy mass transit system into its own right.

From Cane to the Candy Bar

In order to feed the booming candy business, Hershey and his company began buying land 27 miles east of Havana, Cuba in 1916. This land was home to large tracts of sugar cane crop, and in order to keep it employed, Hershey's associates began developing the Hershey Electric Railway to transport workers to the fields and produce to the ports in the North. The line was steam powered during construction, but by January 1922, the line was fully electrified and running between Matanzas and "Central Hershey", then to Casablanca (across from Havana) that same October. The line faced stiff competition from United Railways (the operator of Cuba's other railways into Havana Province), but got around it by never entering Havana in the first place. A ferry was run from Casablanca to Havana to compensate. The operations were similarly unique, as the 1200-volt DC cars carried both trolley poles and pantographs to use as much existing streetcar lines through Matanzas and Regla. 

A mule grazes near cars 201 and 154 on its way to Matanzas. If not for the
black and white filter, you'd be mistaken for thinking this photo is from the 
early years, when really it's from 1956.
(Ray DeGroote)

A Hershey Electric Railway train waits at the northern
terminus at Casablanca, with an express motor attached.
The picture is from 1958.
(Richard Omer)

Following the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the company renamed itself the "Camilo Cienfuegos Division of Ferrocarriles de Cuba", but to railfans, it was more popularly known as the "world's last interurban." Plenty did not change between then and the 1990s, as the antique Brill and Cincinnati stock continued running just as they did in the 1920s with a little modernization and rebuilding. In 1998, they were more-or-less displaced by eight "new" cars from the Ferrocarrls de la Generalitat de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain. These high-platform loading EMUs were actually built in 1944 and remodeled in 1979, but they were still considered "new". At this same time, the Hershey railway finally reached Havana as Ferrocarriles de Cuba used diesels to haul them to a new station called "La Coubre". In 2002, the Hershey Central Sugar Mill closed but the Hershey Electric Railway continues operating with its Spanish EMUs with the older American cars being trotted out on special occasions.

Notable Flavors and Variants

An as-delivered photo of Brill Combine No. 3
in 1904, with crew. The Brill design is evident
from the tucked-in trucks to the stubby horsecar design.
(Friends of the Hershey Trolley)

In America, Hershey's 34 streetcars were all Brill products ranging in era from as early as 1892 to as late as 1920. Despite having 34 streetcars, the roster only went to 30 as different cars replaced others early on. Notable, there was never a number "13" due to superstitious reasons. The first cars purchased by the H&C were Brill "convertible cars", with one chair and two combination cars with freight sections attached to load milk tanks and other chocolate factory supplies. These cars under HTCo were painted a handsome Pullman green with yellow trim, and inside the reversible seats were outfitted with plush cloth cushioning that gave its riders a luxurious commute. Other cars inherited were elderly 1890s Brills and Laclede cars from old constituents like the Pennsylvania Traction Company and the Lancaster, Ephrata & Lebanon. Outside of passenger services, the line converted old Brill No. 3 (one of the original combines) into a  "construction car" that tended to the wire and track, and two freight/express streetcars numbered 24 and 25, which took over the Derry milk runs. Hilariously, Brill only ever provided one Birney, Number 30, which was later sold to the Indiana Railroad in 1947. 

A scrapbook of trolley cars all throughout the HTCo's history. From top, left to right:
1. Rebuilt No. 3 is now a construction car, with the only telltale being its combine door.
(Richard Steinmetz)
2. Express Car No. 25 was one of three built fresh by Brill in the 1910s, and worked
the last express milk run in the 1930s.
(Trolleyville Times)
3. Hershey Transit No. 10 is representative of the standard Brill double-truck types common
to the Hershey system.
(Trolleyville Times)
4. Express Car No. 9 fills up on milk in 1915. The top still says "Hummelstown & Campbelltown".
(Hershey Community Archives)
5. Little Brill No. 7 was built in 1892, and was retired in 1934 after serving as the Hershey Park shuttle.
(Hershey History.org)

Cincinnati Car Co. No. 211 poses at
Central Hershey Station in 1958.
(Richard Omer)

The first interurban cars to arrive in Cuba were actually Cincinnati Car Company products that were completed in June 1919. These cars were built for the Cienfuegos tramway but sat unused until being bought by Hershey in 1924. The Brill cars arrived barely a year later, and they worked the interurban line in much the same fashion as their hometown counterparts. Mr. Hershey was adamant about using electric power for the sake of modernity. In contrast to the classy Pullman green, the Cuban cars were painted in a muddy chocolate red-brown that looked startlingly similar to the chili pepper-laced cocoa drank by Montezuma in Mesoamerica, with plain gold lettering. Over the years, the cars were rebuilt with standee windows, rounded roofs, and pantographs filling in full-time with the trolley poles being removed. After the refinery closed in 2002, Ferrocarriles de Cuba noted tourists were flocking to the island to not only take in the historic railway scene, but also to ride the old Hershey cars. In response, surviving Brill cars 3008 and 3009 were repainted in a flashy red-and-silver scheme (reminiscent of the Lehigh Valley's "Liberty Bell Limited") and rebranded "Trans Hershey" to work on the Santiago de Cuba tourist line on the town's 500th anniversary.

Cars 3008 and 3009 look swanky in their new liveries in 2004.
(Photographer unknown)

The System Melts

A notice of closure for the Lebanon Division
of Hershey Transit, December 30, 1942.
(The Hershey Story)

While the Cuban system was able to outlast the American system by several years, the Hershey Transit Company went as quietly and with as much dignity as it could. The rise of automobile traffic and the Great Depression hurt the company financially, and despite the loyal ridership of the picnic trains out to Hershey Park and the chocolate factory continuing to make a profit, the HTCo began investing in buses as early as the 1930s. The picnic trains stopped through the decade and services were cut back, starting with service to Palmyra, followed by lines out to Elizabethtown and Lebanon being torn up. This would have been the end of the Hershey system entirely... until World War II happened. 

A surviving "Air Raid Emergency Coupon"
that allowed passengers to get back aboard
for free.
(The Hershey Story)

Due to the government's rationing of rubber and gasoline, bus conversion of the Hershey system ended up delayed in 1942 as the trolleys were sent back to work. For four more years, streetcars filled the streets of Hummelstown, Hershey, Palmyra, and Campbelltown, with special "Air Raid Emergency Coupons" given to passengers to allow them to board for free after air raid drills were performed. Despite this healthy injection of business and ridership, by the end of the war in 1945, the Hershey system was due to closure. Cars 17, 21, and 23 made the last runs on December 21, 1946, and the next day, buses took over. The citizens were quite sad to see Mr. Hershey's trolleys go, but they did serve the town dutifully for forty years. To them, that was good enough. 

Sweet Survivors

Volunteers of the "Friends of the Hershey Trolley"
pose with newly-acquired Car No. 7 in 2007,
after the car was used from 1946 onward as a house for
Amy Dolbin and her family in Enola, PA. 
(Friends of the Hershey Trolley)

Today, public transit in the Chocolate Capital are handled by Harrisburg's Capital Area Transit and Lebanon's County of Lebanon Transit Authority, running several different routes connecting to Hershey's outlet stores and Hersheypark. The Cuban Cars, 3008 and 3009, are the only operating remnants of the original Hershey Electric Railway system, and as of 2018 they are stored at the Ferrocarriles de Cuba Hershey carbarn in operating condition. Of the American system, Cincinnati Car No. 7 (built in 1914 for the Ephrata & Lebanon) and Brill No. 3 (the aforementioned construction car) now survive under the Friends of the Hershey Trolley, both of which are being restored to their original and lavish conditions at the original car barn in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The chocolate factory occasionally acknowledges its public transit past through special chocolate tins and a trolley-shaped tour bus that travels around the town, but nothing can ever replace Mr. Hershey's cars. Now if only Ghirardelli can make a chocolate cable car...

A bit of chocolate sounds downright delicious right now...
(Hershey's Chocolates)

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Thank you for reading today's Trolley Thursday post, and watch your step as you alight on the platform. My sources today were from an intense variety, but I want to especially credit the Hershey Museum, Friends of the Hershey Trolley, and TRAMZ.com's article on the Cuban Hershey Trolleys. Next week, we finish off our Pennsylvania Trolley adventure by examining the long, varied, and fraught history of the South Eastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority or SEPTA! (And if there's any trolley company I missed this month like Johnstown Traction, I'll get around to it eventually!) For now, you can follow myself or my editor on Twitter, buy a shirt or sticker from our Redbubble stand, or purchase my editor's self-developed board game! It's like Ticket to Ride, but cooler! (and you get to support him through it!) Until next time, ride safe!