Customer Reviews

Trolley Car Treasury: A Century of American Streetcars - Horsecars, Cable Cars, Interurbans, and Trolleys

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My father is a long time trolley fan, and grew up riding them in Philadelphia. I read his battered copy of this book for many years until it disintegrated. I was pleased to find it here and now have my own copy to share with my kids. Frank Rowsome Jr.'s incomparable book is rich with informed, often hilarious stories of the rise and heyday of the urban trolley car. One of my favorite chapters looks at the spring driven trolley, one of many bizarre early attempts to find a suitable power source for street cars. Its fate is unrecorded, and Rowsome speculates, "It may have been that the car, its 80 springs coiled tensely and its governor disordered, shot arrowlike through Philadelphia and into the Schuylkill river."

There is a whole section on Frank Sprague, a now little known inventive genius who perfected the electric trolley car and many other devices. The closing section on the demise of the trolley due to the bus and the pressures of General Motors, is touching. Anybody who is interested in little known bits of our past will find this book entertaining. It is, alas, long out of print, but Amazon appears to have a line on many good used copies, and I'd advise you to grab one while you can.