Trolley Thursday 11/30/21 - The Denver Tramway... Revisited

On today's Trolley Tuesday rewrite, we're returning to the Mile-High City as we look at the history of America's last independent streetcar system: the Denver Tramway. Originally written in two parts, I'm choosing to rewrite this one as I feel like most of my earlier two-parts can now be concisely bunched into one whole post with much better information within. But Denver's history is just more than privatized transit, as its history goes back to the late 1860s and is full of agitation, monopoly, and big unique streetcars. So saddle up and get Rocky Mountain High, as we turn our eyes to the complete history of the Denver Tramway!

Trolley Tuesday 11/25/21 - Seattle Municipal Electric Railway... Revisited

Welcome, dear riders to our Twice-Weekly Trolley History Thanksgiving Special! The special thing about it is it is not a special at all, rather just the next planned episode in our series of November (creeping into December) rewrites! As we're technically still in the Pacific Northwest, we turn our attention from the stumpy, coffee-addicted hipsterdom of Portland, Oregon, to look at another stumpy, coffee-addicted hipsterdom in the form of Seattle, Washington! Following in the footsteps of San Francisco's transit revolution, Seattle's 231 miles of electric street railways over 26 lines made up one of the largest municipal transit systems in the wake of the original "Muni". However, unlike San Francisco, Seattle had a hard time making theirs work, and what was once a promising future of complete public control and service became a black hole that could only end in bus operation. On today's Trolley Thursday, let's revisit the Seattle Municipal Street Railway and see what made the Emerald City shine!

Trolley Thursday 11/18/21 - The Puget Sound Electric Railway... Revisited

Well, we've been away for quite a while. I had unexpectedly become busy and my editor was on vacation, so we were not able to bring you this latest rewrite until now. That being said...

Today's trolleypost rewrite deals with the Puget Sound Electric Railway, the first series of posts I had using an actual book (that being Warren G. Wing's "To Tacoma by Trolley", a present from one of my friends). While those three posts are still pretty thorough, I found them artificially bloated and awkwardly paced because I tried to fit every fact I could into them from just a glancing read. Today, however, things will be different as we smell the fresh... whatever kind of air that is in Tacoma and we return to the Pacific Northwest as we look at Washington's finest interurban, the Puget Sound Electric Railway!

Trolley Tuesday 11/9/2021 - The Southern Pacific's Red Electric Lines ...Revisited

Welcome to another rewrite of an old Trolley Tuesday classic, this time one that never actually made it from Twitter to Blogger! Despite having a wealth of interurban traction holdings in Marin County, San Francisco's East Bay, and down in Los Angeles, the Southern Pacific Railway's Oregonian odysseys were more short-lived, being used as a weapon in a mighty railroad war instead of the usual reason of boosting real estate values. Nevertheless, from 1914 to 1929, the mighty "Red Electrics" ruled the Willamette River's west banks as the Evergreen State's state of the art, largest, and fastest interurban line. On today's Trolley Tuesday, let's look back on what made the Red Electrics so memorable.

Trolley Tuesday 11/3/21 - The Oregon Electric Railway... Revisited

Welcome to another round of Trolleyposting in November! Having changed so much since we've first started this blog, I thought it would be a good idea to go back and redo some of the episodes I found quite lacking, either through wholesale absence of information or an early writing style trying to escape from the trappings of Twitter character limits. For our first foray, we return to the state that started off this blog, Oregon, to give you an expanded history on the very first episode, the Oregon Electric Railway, and its long-forgotten interurbans (and its famous rivalry with the SP Red Electrics)!