Trolley Thursday 12-31-20 - Happy New Year

From the Motorman

Idiot at the controls.

If you might have noticed, there's no trolley post today. I didn't even plan for one on this, one of the most special days of the year, because I wanted to reserve today to talk to you: our readers (or passengers, take your pick). Since I started doing these trolley posts on Twitter back in 2019, I've received a reliable readership who've been eagerly reading all the stuff I have to say, to the point where I had to move to an all-new site to bring you even more information.

I'll admit, starting out on this site was rocky. Despite what you might think, it took whole months to find the right style, length, and substance of all the topics I wanted to talk about. Often, it would come very awkward or jarring, and I'd worry that I'd alienate a lot of people due to the inconsistent style. However, come October with Boston month, I found the right paragraph length, language, and style that suits everything going forward. 

It is also a fun thing to collaborate with other people and even whole museum organizations on some of the topics I've covered. If not for Josh Bernhard, Jonathan Lee, Atticus van Astikatus, the Interurban Railway Museum of Plano, TX, the Seashore Trolley Museum of Kennebunkport, ME, the New York Transit Museum of New York, NY, and others, I'd probably do a bad job representing cities outside where I actually live, Los Angeles. Being able to represent cities near-accurately and celebrate their street railways fills me with a lot of joy, and in turn I hope to share those with you.

I'll also give special thanks to my conductor, Nakkune, for not only putting up with being my proofreader and editor all of this year, but also suggesting I move my stuff over to Blogger in the first place. With this new site, we've been able to reach hundreds, maybe thousands, of people all over the world to join in our mass transit celebration, with our highest episode being the Illinois Traction for some odd reason. 

I hope to continue this energy and commitment to both entertainment and education into 2021, and I can only do it with all of you reading and sharing our little column. Who knows? Maybe we might even make a difference in saving some rare streetcar for preservation, or restoring one to operation. For now, have a safe and wonderful New Year and see you next Tuesday.

From the Conductor

The sane one with the emergency valve.

Hey, Nakkune here, your conductor and editor of this blog. As we bring a close to the Year That Shall Not Be Named, I wanted to thank you all for reading our blog. I hope you join us again next Tuesday as we continue to explore trolley systems both big and small in the new year. We’ve got plenty of exciting systems in store, so stay tuned!

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Thank you for reading today's Trolley post, and watch your step as you alight on the platform. On Next Year's Tuesday, we finally take a look at one of the most famous electric railways in the world: The Pacific Electric Railway of Los Angeles, California. 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!

Trolley Tuesday 12/28/20 - The New York, Westchester & Boston Railway

Up the Hudson River from New York City is Westchester County, which borders the Bronx to the south and the state of Connecticut in the North. The area slowly developed into one of New York's suburban counties, with towns such as Yonkers and Peekskill being served by New York Central & Hudson River steam trains ferrying commuters into the Big Apple. In order to better serve prospective commuters, one of the richest men in the world invested in the area's only significant electric railway that, for a brief period between 1912 and 1937, was quite simply the most expensive passenger railroad in America. Though it is now a mere memory that only exists in photographs and firsthand accounts, today's Trolley Tuesday aims to uncover the history and legacy of the New York, Westchester & Boston Railway.

Trolley Thursday 12/24/20 - The New York State Railways

Throughout this month, we've been looking at New York City streetcars and rapid transit, but did you know there existed another, much larger interurban system in upstate New York? From 1909 to 1948, the mighty New York Central Railroad controlled several interurban railroads that connected the lakeside city of Rochester with the Finger Lakes Region towns of  Syracuse, Oneida (pronounced Ohn-Ida, trust me), Rome, and Utica. While its history is long and complex, this country interurban is sadly all mostly gone yet still has a compelling story to tell. On today's Christmas Eve Trolley Thursday, let's climb aboard the New York State Railways and explore the history of this fascinating interurban!

Trolley Thursday 12/16/20 - The IND and NYCTA R-Type Subway Cars

If you are an upstart street railroad in America, you'd think the way to pack your rosters is to approach a company like J.G. Brill or G.C. Kuhlman and offer to buy one of their standard, cataloged designs out of a pamphlet. Often times, street railways in Philadelphia or Cincinnati would actually collaborate with their local carmakers to design products to fit their own needs, like the famous Peter Witt Car. For a city as big and as varied as New York, however, they decided to do things a little differently. Starting in the Electric Railway Journal, the city's Board of Transportation advertised that it would "soon advertise for bids for the construction of 300 steel cars for service on the Eighth Avenue-Central Park West-Washington Heights line of the new subway system." Little did the Board and their operating division, the Independent Subway Service, know that over 90 years later, these contract bids would still be going with the car numbers types rising to almost 200 by this year! (2020) How did all of this happen? Hop on board today's Trolley Thursday to find out, as we take a ride on board New York's R-Type Fleet!

Trolley Tuesday 10/15/20 - New York City Elevated Cars of the IRT and BMT

The City of New York's elevated and subway cars have always been a curious anachronism, even when they were still in service. Some of the first elevated electric cars in 1903 worked all the way up to 1950, with the last pre-New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) car designs being retired in 1969. However, despite their long working lives, many of the original Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) and Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit (BMT) designs pioneered plenty of revolutionary ideas that modern R-Contract subway cars continue to use today. On today's Trolley Tuesday, let's strip the curtain back and take a close look at the rapid transit cars that shaped New York City!

Trolley Thursday 12/11/20 - A Brief History of the New York Subways and Elevateds, Part 2

Welcome back to Part 2 of our New York Subway and Elevated excursion! On Tuesday, we covered the early independent histories of the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT) and how both built up Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx as their own public transit empires. Like all good things though, private transit enterprises were not long for this world and both companies soon found themselves under public city control. Could a city as big and diverse as New York really run their own mass transit, and run it well? All of this and more in today's Trolley Thursday, all about the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA).

Trolley Tuesday 12/08/20 - A Brief History of New York's Subways and Elevateds, Part 1

Peek into any children's book about trains, and you'll find a simple question posited to the reader: "Why does New York City have a subway or an elevated railroad?" The answer is, of course, "because there was plenty of traffic." However, read more into the real history of New York City and you'll find the first elevated railroad went up way before the first commercial motorcar was ever produced. Despite being only a pioneer in elevated railways (as Boston already claimed the first subway in America), the New York rapid transit systems under the Interborough Rapid Transit and the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit companies remain one of the largest and most historic in the United States, and even the world. In today's Trolley Tuesday, we'll see how these systems got Gotham on the move.

Also if you haven't noticed, the title of my blog does involve "Trolleys", but it's my blog so I can cover whatever I want. This includes significant rapid transit lines like New York. With that out of the way...

Trolley Thursday 12/03/20 - The New York Railways & the Third Avenue Railway System

Today, New York City is home to a vast, extensive network of elevated and underground railroads that span its five boroughs, and no establishing shot of the Big Apple is complete without such a train roaring through a subway station or clattering overhead on some century-old iron girders. But before New York found its identity through rapid transit, the borough of Manhattan was on the move thanks to an extensive streetcar grid from its very inception in 1832 to the final "bus-titutions" in the mid-1950s. On this Trolley Thursday, let's see how streetcars were "made in Manhattan" and explore the extensive history of the New York Railways!

Trolley Tuesday 12/01/20 - The Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company

If there's one city well-known for its deep history with railed rapid transit, it's New York. The city's mass transit history alone can fill up every day of December and we'd still be unable to tell you the whole story. Every single mile of street and elevated rail oozes notable stories that have since become legendary from World Series-winning baseball teams to manufacturing firsts and so on. Brooklyn has always been a multi-faceted and densely-populated borough, with a rough-and-tumble reputation of hard workers, and their mass transit was equally as hardy. On today's Trolley Tuesday, it's No Sleep Till Brooklyn as we look at the enormous history the Brooklyn & Queens Transit Company, better known as the B&QT.