FROM PHILLY TO ROCHESTER


Trolleys by Twilight


BY OTTO M. VONDRAK/PHOTOS AS NOTED


THE SO-CALLED “INTERURBAN ERA” was a relatively short period of American transportation history largely confined to the years between World War I and World War II. New York State was once criss-crossed with electric lines, mak- ing it possible to travel from Brooklyn to Buffalo by trolley. The lines that had not died off during the Great Depres- sion enjoyed a slow painful death in the years of postwar prosperity that fol- lowed. The last local trolley lines in New York State shut down in 1956 (Rochester) and 1957 (Queens). Originally chartered as the Eastern link in a great transcontinental “alpha- bet route,” the Philadelphia & Western was planned to connect the City of Brotherly


Love with the Western


Maryland Railway at York. By 1907, construction had progressed from its terminal at 69th Street to Strafford. The company was reorganized and the route to York abandoned in favor of a new main line to Norristown, complet- ed in 1912.


Built as a high-speed, grade-separat- ed railroad, trains were powered by 600-volt d.c. third rail. So-called “Straf- ford Cars” were introduced between 1924 and 1929, these heavy steel in- terurbans augmented the P&W fleet of electric cars and served for many years. In 1954 the P&W was acquired by the Philadelphia Suburban Trans- portation Company, which in turn was absorbed


by SEPTA (Southeastern


Pennsylvania Transportation Authori- ty) in 1970. The old Strafford cars were retired


in 1990, though the former 64 AUGUST 2013 • RAILFAN.COM


P&W continues to operate to this day as the Route 100 “Norristown High Speed Line.” Ordinarily, this would have been the


end of the line for the Strafford cars, had it not been for a strange turn of events following


their retirement. Keokuk


Junction Railway in Iowa acquired four cars from SEPTA in 1991 with inten- tions of offering trolley rides using a generator on a trailer to provide the juice. These hefty cars enjoyed a bit of notoriety during the great Mississippi River floods of 1993, when nearly every crossing was inaccessible. The dam at Keokuk had an electric railroad running across the top of the structure which was used for maintenance, so the rail- road trucked in Car 161 and pressed it into emergency shuttle service, offering the only safe crossing of the Mississippi for 100 miles in either direction. Meanwhile, back in New York State, there were plans afoot to bring trolley service back for the first time in nearly 50 years. The New York Museum of Transportation was formed in part to rescue a collection of trolleys and arti- facts that had been orphaned at the Magee Transportation Museum in Pennsylvania following Hurricane Agnes in 1972. With the goal of restor- ing and operating trolleys for the pub- lic, tracks were constructed on the property leading out of the carbarn. Rails were salvaged from the old Rochester Subway, portions of which were being scrapped around the same time NYMT was starting up.


(Continued on page 66)


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