Back to the gaps in eletric railway travel from Maine to Wisconsin: One gap was short enough to see across, but you couldn't walk across it, the other might have been walkable, but it would have taken most of the day.
The one that you could see across was obviously water bridged by a ferry boat line owned by one of the connecting electric lines. I don't at this point know which river or bay, possibly between Detroit and Windsor? The walkable one might have been between Hudson and Rennselleir in New York State. I know that Hudson was connected to Boston but Albany and Rennsellier were not, I beloeive.
Detoirt and Windsor are not correct, because Erie, PA was connected to Chciago, via Cleveland, LimA, Fort Wayne, Winona, South Bend, as well as Cleveland - Dayton - Richmond - New Castle - Fort Wayne. The gap must be some river or estuary crossing between Erie, PA and Buffalo.
Of course an alternate route would be via New York City and Pennsylvania, and then the water gap might be the Hudson, depending on whether or not you include rapid transit or exclude it, and the all-day walkable gap between Juniata or Hollidaysburg and Latrobe, PA.
The water gap was further east. For the westermost of the two gaps, consider that a Utica NY group of businessmen once chartered a car to the Kentuck Derby, and you could "easily" get from Louisville to Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.
FURTHER EAST OF THE HUDSON RIVER? THE HUDSON WAS APPROACHABLD BY STREETCAR AND INTERURBAN FROM BOSTON AND THUS WATERVILLE, MAINE, AT NUMEROUS POINTS. NEARLY NEW YORK CITY FERRY NEW JERSEY .HAD A STREETCAR SERVING IT
WAS THE WESTERN GAP SOMEWHERE BETWEEN UTICA AND SCHENECTIDY?
The Hudson was crossed at Troy and Albany by streetcars, so it wasn't a gap. You're looking in the right place for the western gap. The Interurban that owned the means of crossing the eastern gap had a line into its neighbor state to the west, but the one line it connected to didn't connect with any others in that state.
Answeing your description, the Berkshire Street Railway did serve Hudson, New York, but did not connect with any other New York State trolley lines, and di probide a connection to Springrield Railways, the interurban via two routs to Worcester, then the B&W to Boston and on. Could one see from the end of the line at Hudson Pier to Albany (United?) Traction's terminal south of Rensseleir?
I am unfamiliar with any streetcar or interruban running east from Utca. The Johnston Fonda and Golversville had interurbnas (later Brill "Bullets," smaller versions of Philadelphia and Western's) to Fonda, then steam to Gloversvile. I supse the western gap existed west of Fonda. Hudson to Rensseleir could serve as an eastern gap, and possibly either Berkshire or Albany's system (United something or other?) had a conntecting prijmitive bus.
WAG Connecticut River?
The Connecticiut River was bridged with streetcars at Springfield.
Massachusetts could be traversed end-to-end by streetcar, and reached from every adjoining state.
Could you cross New Hampshire by streetcar/ interurban?
EDITED The answer is YES.
After some looking around the internet I found the answer.
I also found this map(there are several others for more states)
New England.
http://www.chicagorailfan.com/maptijne.html
New York.
http://www.chicagorailfan.com/maptijny.html
New York City & New Jersey.
http://www.chicagorailfan.com/maptijnj.html
From this I think I see a gap exists thru the Berkshires of Massachusetts down thru northwest Connecticut to Westchester county in New York. I'm not sure about Vermont.
One could get as far as Concord, the State Capitol, but no further.no
Consider how you get to Massachusetts from Maine. The gap was a six cent fare zone.
There were connecting lines west from Springfield Mass that (indirectly) got to the Albany New York area via the southwest corner of Vermont.
ןNCORRECT ABOUT CONCORD, A LOCAL CONCORD STREETCAR COULD GET YOU TO HOOKSET OR SOMETHING SIMILAR, A BIT FURTHER WEST OR NORTH
SO ONE OF THE MASSSACHUSETTS LINES RAN INTO NEW HAMPSHIRE AND DID NOT CONNECT WITH ANY OTHER NEW HAMPSHIRE INTERURBAN. OR WAS IT A LINE SOUTH FROJM MAINE?
Possibly the eastern gap you are looking for`is Kittery - Portsmouth,NH, across Kittery bay, with the ferry service provided by an interurban-owned ferry boat, the Kittery, owned by the Atlantic Shore interuban, running north to Kennibunkport, ME,and connecting with lines running further north.
Geenrally, when such questions were asked back in the days of my youth, volunteering for office labor at the Hoboken Terminal office of the Electric Railroaders Association, such ferry boat crossings were not considered gaps. But the gap north of Hudson, NY was known. So I question a route through southern Vermont linking Massachusetts and New York, and I hope you will supply details.
I think the western gap was Fonda to Herkima Falls, NY.
The Bay State, later the Eastern Mass., did not connect with any other line in New Hampshire but did run to Portsmouth.
Close enough. The Atlantic Shore Line had no physical connections to any companies outside Maine, except for a line of the Dover NH Street Railway to Rochester NH, which did not connect to any other lines in New Hampshire. The Berkshire Street railway wound up from Pittsfield through North Adams to Bennington and then to Hoosick Falls NY, where it met up with New York systems. The gap in New York was between Fonda and Little Falls.
An insteresting bus and trolleybus conversion story and the question follows. Four fairly important streetcar lines and one unimportant one, but part of the same sub-network, were replaced, one fairly important one by buses, slightly rerouted to cover the unimportant one, and the other three by trolleybuses. The day after the last of the three to trolleybuses was converted, a shopman had to deliver a car to a still operatinig line, that is operating today. The direct route to deliver the car included operatoin on one of the lines that had been converted to trolleybuses. All was well until he came to the very first major wired intersection, and he stopped in time to prevent the trolleypole from flying off the wire. He figured out what happened, wrong-railed on this street trackage slowly with bell sounding, and delivered the car via tracks still in service. He was lucky that it happened to be a double-end car.
The trolleybus installation lasted only seven years. Through a sort of domino effect, the opening of a fine new light rail line spelled the demise of the trolleybus installation, and the subsystem is now all bus.
What major transit ssytem, which lines, and what exactly was the reason for the demise of the trolleybus system and where did these trolleybuses operate afterward? The major system still operates streetcars and trolleybuses. And all this happened in a time-frame suitable for this forum.
Bay State did not connect to other lines in New Hampshire, but at Lowell and possibly at other points it did connect with another line that ran to New Hampshire, to Nashua, then connections to Manchester and Concord.
Hint: The specific trolleybuses had a feature peculiar to this transit system and were bought new. Other similar trolleybuses bought second-hand did not have this feature but did not operate on the specific subsystem, but elsewhere in the main system. This feature was necessary where they operated on the subsystem because of one specific boarding and unloading location, carrying on a practice of the streetcars they replaced. Which was also true of where they operated until more recently replaced by new trolleybuses, that also have this feature unique to this system and continue the practice of left-jand boarding and unloading at a specific location.
Also the overall system continiues streetcar operation, currently, on-street operation with lanes shared by other vehicles consitutes only about 4% of the overall rail track miles of the system, and currenty the streetcars operate on what could only be termed as a light rail, not streetcar operation.
Need further hints?
I'm guessing this is Boston, since the left hand doors are pretty much a Boston feature, and San Francisco has more than 4% street running. I can't quite come up with a recent light rail replacement, unless this has to do with the 1959 Riverside ("D" Green ) Line, which led to the downgrading of the "A" Watertown route. I'm guessing the shop is the T's Watertown shop. I think the Harvard Square loop has left hand boarding, which would make the conversion route the 71 Watertown/Harvard.
You got enough answers right. The new light rail line is the Riverside, Highland Branch, Green D. Line. PCC were needed to run this line, so they were taken from Waternown-Harvard-North Cambridge and Waverly-Harvard-North-Cambrdge. Buses could not be substituted because of the Harvard Square underground interchange, and left-hand-door trolleybuses were required. So the seven-year-old trolleybus system running south from Forest Hills Station, three trolleybus lines where there were once five streetcar lines, was scrapped. Actually the last line converted to trolley bus, Araborway - Cleary Square, lasted only 5-12 years.
The streetcar-to-bus-and-trolleybus conversion started in 1950 and ended in 1952. The end of trolleybus operation came in 1957. The Harvard Square system was converted from streetcar to trolleybus in 1958.
The existing line for which the just-overhauled Type 5 was heading was and is the Ashmont - Mattapn line, which had been conencted to Arborway the day before by the Araborway - Mattapan line, sharing Cleary Square line trackage to the Commings Highway intersection. The could still find usable track up to Egleston, then to Mattapan on the Blue Hill Avenue line that did not go bus until 1955. Now Ashmonst-Mattapan cars go via rapid transit tracks to be overhauled at the Red Line's rapid transit shop.
Dave and Rob:
A little off topic, but how many US and Canadian cities still use trolley buses? I remember riding one in Winnipeg about 50 or 60 years ago.
Ed Burns
Vancouver still runs trolley buses. It's the last system in Canada. Hamilton ran them until 1992 or so. Not sure about the States but I'm sure Boston and San Francisco still have them.
Seattle, Philadelphia and Dayton Ohio also run trolley buses. Boston has one line that uses dual-modes to serve the airport.
When this elevated railway was electrified in the 1890s, six of its steamers went to a railroad that operated them for a time over the tracks of a different elevated. I'm looking for the owners of the steamers and the elevated railway names.
The Long Island Railroad bought ex-Chicago 0-4-4T's. I think from what became the Metropolitan, but possibly Lake Street, and used them on Sands Street, Brooklyn-Jamaica, and Sands Street-Rockaway Beach and Broadway Ferry-Rockaway Beach services using tracks of the Brooklyn United elevatedl lines between an incline east of Flatbush Avenue on Atlantic Avenue and Sands Street, and betwen Crescent Street at a ramp connecting the East Fulton Street elevated structure and the LIRR tracks on Atlantic Avenue to the Broadway Ferry. The latter service was summer only, alternated with Brooklyn United trainis. The service to Sands Street ended with electrication and rebuilding of the Atlantic Terminal. But the summer only service ended only with openjing of Penn Station, and had the earliest mu cars replacing the tank engines (I think Forneys) with mp41 Gibbs cars and wood trailers for the LIRR alternating with comoposite 1300-series convertables for BU, and extension over the Wiliiamsburg Bridge first to Essex and Delancy and then very briefly to Chambers Street and Center Street.
LIRR bought six Rhode Island 0-4-4Ts from the Lake Street Elevated Railway, whose engines were among the most widely distributed of former L engines. LIRR removed LSERy's vacuum brakes, replacing them with Westinghouse train air. Service on the BERy lasted until 1904.
Name a steam-railroad-operated rapid transit service that used what were essentially subway-type mu electric cars, with more than one route. The service did not connect directly with any other railroad passenger service, except at one time a few local streetcar routs, not even the thru passenger services of the owning steam railroad.
The LIRR 0-4-4Ts were the last steam locomotives to operate on the Brooklyn elevateds, even after all elevated trains were mu electrics.
The first LIRR electric mus arrived in 1904, nearly identacle to the IRT's first all-steel cars. They operated in the joint Williamsburg Bridge service for the last time in the summer of 1910. They were still in use in WWII, class MP41. The MP54s came later, in time for Penn Station's opening.
There were two steam operations that matched your description. The obvious one was the IC's suburban operation, which had a three routes and shared right-of-way but not much else with IC's mainline passenger operations.
SP had a steam operation in Oakland CA, most of which was later electrified in 1912, but at least some of which was operated in conjunction with a streetcar-like operation through downtown Oakland across the Oakland Estuary to Alemeda. SP's steam operations did share the Oakland Mole with SP's other services.
Staten Island Rapid Transit under the B&O?
SIRT under B&O. The two steam operations did connect with other passenger services operated by the respective railroads, and the equipment may be termed rapid transit equipmennt but was not similar to any subway cars I know of. On the other hand the SIRT standard mu cars were built to the same dimensions as the BMT 2000's, A and B types, were compatible with those cars, and some actually operated on the BMT after WWII, after the IND division began running to Rockaway, and there was a real shortage of steel cars, in part made up by running the BMT Culver service with ex-SIRT cars, with these cars seeing service in the 4thAvenue Subway and making it into Manhattan.
Your question..
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