Trolley Ride

PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: Culture: That shared amalgam of understandings, assumptions, institutions, events that bind people together — where does it come from? Trolleys once moved us; is it possible they also changed us? 

The first trolleys were horse trolleys. They barely moved faster than pedestrians on the sidewalk, and conversations were occasionally carried on between cab and curb. However, unlike stage coaches, trolleys followed tracks, maintained a schedule, and they provided space where people mixed and conversed publicly, often encouraged by the banter of the conductor. 

And even in the 1890’s when trolleys were electrified and horses were pastured, the motorman-conductor teams were known along their routes. They carried the news of the day, greeted their regulars by name, were a presence in each neighborhood assuring all’s well. The trolley’s whirring engine marked the city’s pulse, sang its lullaby.

Inter-city trolleys linked families, expanded horizons, tied cities into regions, made home bigger and mixed us up. 

When the trolley companies battled against the motormen and conductors, the riders often sided with the  faces they knew and trusted. Some children dreamed of becoming conductors, pillars of the community, beloved by all. Others dreamed of sitting up front, steering and controlling the engines that made the trolley stop and roll. Things often weren’t fair or friendly, but the civic space of the trolleys knitted neighborhoods and communities that made other things possible.

resources: 
Trolley Wars: Streetcar Workers on the Line by Scott Mollow
Post Roads and Iron Horses, by Richard DeLuca