Every once in awhile, your passions in life overlap – in my case, two of those passions are mass transit and film noir. I recently found a superb website called thetrolleydodger.com. It’s filled with tons of pictures and interesting historical facts on all forms of mass transit, but with a focus on rail (trolleys, PCC Cars, Interurbans, etc.). A series of beautifully evocative photos of nighttime trolley scenes really caught my eye – take a look at them below…
These photos were taken by Mr John F. Bromley – a contributor to the site and an author of several books on mass transit. Mr Bromley lived in Toronto, and unfortunately passed away last December. But he gifted us with a repository of beautiful photos – ones he had taken from the early 1950’s until very recently. The nighttime scenes are especially spectacular – the locations in Toronto are included for our Canadian readers who may recognize them…
When I look at these pictures I can almost hear Robert Mitchum saying; “It was late…my car stood me up like all the dames I’ve ever known, so I had to take the trolley…I was tailing a married shoe salesmen from Baltimore who was playing footsie with a rich widow, when all of a sudden….”
Our sincere thanks to Mr David Sadowski of thetrolleydodger.com for permission to share the photos. And to steal a phrase from Motorweek’s John Davis, if you haven’t visited the site, “cruise on over”…
I was at college some years ago in Toronto and found a decent apartment I could afford (impossible now) in the Roncesvalles area. My main view was of the service yard and garage where the trolleys parked, only several meters away. It was a nice arrangement; other than the friction of the wheels on curved rails it was pretty quiet, and at night there’d be a few sparks once in a while from the overhead cables. Winter made it even more picturesque.
Great photos here.
These are nicely done pictures–how wonderful that someone’s 1960s pursuit can be shared like this. (Kind of you to ask permission and give credit, etc.)
I couldn’t help but think of segments of “The Christmas Story” filmed in Toronto rather than Cleveland; while buying the tree, several trolleys go by:
An excellent collection. An exhaustive collection of TTC historical streetcars and buses etc. can also be found at the following address: https://transit.toronto.on.ca/streetcar/4507.shtml
Excellent website find and pic selections. Thank you Jim.
I was lucky to visit Toronto a few times as a kid in the 70s and saw many of these old ‘Red Rockets’ still in service. As TO was one of those cities in the US and Canada that didn’t tear out their streetcar lines.
I also remember hearing Murray McLauchlan’s iconic ‘Down by the Henry Moore’ a lot on the radio back then, as it was generally considered the unofficial anthem of Toronto at the time.
Thanks for sharing these very evocative shots. Like you, I have a deep passion for mass transit, especially trolleys, undoubtedly due to early exposure in Innsbruck. Riding the trolleys was always a thrill.
It is worth noting that Toronto still maintains the use of street cars to this day.
Being from Buffalo I visit Toronto often and I’ve noticed that there is whole new fleet of trolleys. The previous generation has been retired.
Yes. The “PCC” cars in the second to last photo above were replaced with the “CLRV” cars in the last photo. Now the CLRVs that were introduced in the 1980s have been retired, in favour of streetcars that were manufactured in the last year or two. The latest generation were fraught with problems and have a unique configuration, but they are now coming on line with more success.
I hope you have a Nexus card to expedite your border crossings. I last visited friends in Buffalo in the fall, and it took me like 30 seconds to cross the border using my card.
When I was a kid in Buffalo there were still streetcar tracks in some places but they stupidly killed off the actual streetcars like many other cities.
In Berlin there are streetcars in the old East half but the West tore out its tracks just like American cities. But now there are modern cars running on the tracks. I imagine there’s some opinion to bring the tracks back to the West? I would certainly be on that side. The of course do have U Bahn all over the place and S Bahn as well.
Thank you for this presentation. I love rail transportation. In the 1980’s we enjoyed a family vacation part of which was spent in Toronto and all of which was seen using public transport – trolleys and the clean subways system. We parked the car at the hotel for the duration of our stay. I have since been back to the area. Growing up in The Bronx, New York we had streetcars (technically these are all called “electric street traction”) but by 1952 the era was past and only in our memories do we see these vehicles.
I also like to thank for sharing these pics. Count me as a fan of mass transit, too. Bus stop classics is one of my favourite sections here.
I live in Toronto, and though I normally cycle to work in good weather, I use the streetcar quite a bit this time of year, and my wife uses it every day. I prefer it to a bus. Nice shots – it’s great to see pictures of Toronto and its streetcars from years ago. The TTC keeps a couple of older streetcars (like the one in the first photo) in running order and original TTC colours, renting them out for special occasions.
IIRC San Francisco and Toronto split the last order of PCC cars to be built. I was living in San Francisco in the mid-1970s, when they were still using PCC cars. During this period an old friend of mine who had previously lived in Toronto moved to San Francisco, and San Francisco bought some old PCC cars from Toronto.
One day my friend and I were in downtown San Francisco, and I spotted one of these cars, still painted in Toronto colors but with San Francisco roll signs. I assume that the Toronto-gauge trucks had been replaced with American standard-gauge trucks. I called my friend’s attention to the car and said, “Does that look familiar?”
Thetrollydodger is a great website. Has great photos of the Erie Lackawanna (DL&W) MU cars. Just bought the headlight from car 4616.
When San Francisco got BART under Market Street they also put in a level above that for modern light rail to replace the above ground (and then through a tunnel) street cars. The original light rail cars by Boeing Vertol were a disaster. Boston also got them and got rid of them as fast as they could and San Francisco added some Boston cars while waiting for something better. Meanwhile they brought the old trolleys back to Market Street and extended them around the Embarcadero (city edge on the water) after the 1950’s freeway was torn down.
So you can ride PCC’s and other oldies any time there.
They also replaced a miles long bus line N-S down the East side to Hunter’s Point area with light rail (I think the modern kind).
I remember back in the olden days when the cable cars were on the same monthly pass as everything else. I used to use them to get to the SF Art Institute. Now of course an expensive tourist attraction.
I heard last week that SFMTA was going to buy five more rail trolleys from outside the U.S. (like Lisbon and Tokyo) to run on the streets of San Francisco. Maybe because Market St. has now been permanently shut down to all auto traffic. Heard on the radio but can’t find a news release about it and whether they are talking special situations.
For what MUNI runs in historical streetcars, cable cars, and trolley buses then see the link below.
https://www.sfmta.com/blog/ride-vintage-green-machines-during-muni-heritage-weekend
Another link of their vintage streetcars by each car.
https://www.streetcar.org/streetcars/
I went to high school in San Francisco from 1969-1973 and rode the PCC cars daily. We would buy our passes at the “car barn” near I-280 and Ocean Avenue, where I was fascinated by the smoky, oily repairs going on inside the dark “barns”. I still feel nostalgic when I see the restored streetcars in SF now, but not enough to ride them. FYI, at least at the time and in our age group, these were called streetcars; trolleys were the rubber-tired trolley buses that plied other routes. The regular busses were the least popular … stinky and loud.
In 1975 my sister got married in Toronto, and then and in a few subsequent visits to see her, I remember riding the trolleys/streetcars and finding them clean and punctual compared to Bay Area public transit (SF Muni and AC Transit)
The Trolley Dodger is a great site. Transit fans took a lot of kodachome slides back in the day and these kind of sites are a great repository of some terrific color shots of urban streets. Here’s a 1953 photo of Chicago’s Loop back on a rainy night in 1953,
https://phogotraphy.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/kodawk25.jpg
Here’s the page of the above photo with an acknowledgement of the original photographer in the comments,
https://phogotraphy.com/2015/09/30/1950s-randolph-street-chicago/
Oh, yeah. When I started with the Bus Company, the Plant Manager told me that average service life for a Canadian bus was 11 years. Average service life for an American bus was 7 or 8 years.
The difference between Canada and America? Vandalism.
I’m not sure I believed him then or now, but he was highly-placed in the company and had worked with the company “forever”, I guess he’d know.
Those cigarette ads on the sides would NOT be allowed today!!
Chico, CA had street cars like the older ones here, they also traveled from Chico to Sacramento, said to travel up to 90 mph in museum photo captions.
I remember ridding PCC cars in Boston in the 70s. They were a brilliant design, the Routemaster of trolleys.
The trolley museum in Brooks Oregon has a working PCC in their fleet http://oerhs.oregontrolley.com/collection/muni-pcc-1159/ and I’m pretty sure the Branford Ct. museum has at least one runner.
I’ve only been to Toronto once, and didn’t have a chance to ride the trolleys