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 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 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.