A COLORADO HERITAGE STREETCAR LINE Fort Collins Trolley BY MICHAEL T. BURKHART/PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR I


N FORT COLLINS, COLO., you don’t need to close your eyes to imagine what the streetcar system looked like 75 years


ago. Much of the original fabric — some tracks, a carbarn and even two of the streetcars — still exist in this colorful northern Colorado town. Located along the Front Range just over halfway between Denver and the Wyoming state line, Fort Collins was founded as a military outpost on the Overland Trail in 1864, grew rapidly, and was incorporated in 1883. Today, it has a population of about 152,000 people. The Fort Collins Municipal Railway has a storied past. The Denver & Interurban Railroad built three radiating streetcar lines in Fort Collins in 1907. An extremely small system by the standards


58 JANUARY 2017 • RAILFAN.COM


of the day, the lines were unprofitable and the system closed abruptly in July 1918. The city needed a reliable public transportation system, and purchased the tracks six months later, according to the Fort Collins Municipal Railway Society (FCMRS), the all-volunteer organization that operates the line today. The two-truck cars that ran the street railway were not part of the deal, so the city placed an order for four new single-truck Birney Safety Cars, numbered 20 through 23, from St. Louis’ American Car Co. From 1920 to 1946, five more Birneys — purchased used — were added to the fleet. The compact rail system lasted until May 1951, far longer than many other streetcar routes across the country.


Restoration Efforts


When the line closed, Fort Collins was the last system in the U.S. to operate Birney cars in regular service. In fact, Car 21, the motor in service today and the first to run on the city-owned line, never left Fort Collins. When service ceased, it was displayed next to the town library, where it sat for more than 25 years.


There was a proposal in 1977 to cosmetically restore the car,


which


suffered from years of outside storage. But a group of volunteers went a step further, painstakingly completing not only a cosmetic but also a mechanical restoration between 1978 and 1985. It’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The car needed a


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