<Mass Transit bus garages that used to be trolley barns

[Anonymous]

About 2 years ago I was in Worchester(?) Mass. I had to go to the local bus garage for something. The Trolley tracks were still in the floor of the garage eevn though they did not have trolleys for 60 years!.
Other towns that i can think of who Bus garages used to be Trolley barns are,

Burlington VT- Vermont transit(Now Greyhound) on Winooski used to be a trolley barn.
Akron OH--Moved 6 years ago to new garage next door
Woodhill Garage Cleveland OH
Not sure on Buffalo or Jamestown NY?
Any others?

[Modelcar]

Johnstown, Pa......Johnstown Traction Co. Stopped rail operations in June of 1960

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

Chicago Transit Authority's Archer-Rockwell garage, although heavily rebuilt, was originally a carbarn for Chicago City Railway, a predecessor of Chicago Surface Lines. There may be other garages on CTA with a similar history.

[dldance]

Trolley Square in Salt Lake City is a shopping center development that used to be a trolley barn. Only the basic shell remains the same as it has been massively rebuilt.

dd

[mudchicken]

In Cincinnati, the trolley barns at Spring Grove Ave & Ludlow are now warehouses & Furniture stores. Colorado Springs is a furniture store. Denver's horsecar barns are commercial businesses & restaurants and the Denver Tramway powerhouse is now a wilderness outfitter's flagship store.

[Anonymous]

Milwaukee, WI we have facilities that were car barns. Some of us still cal them carbarns! I checked some plans for resurfacing the bus stalls in the garages and they were labeled "tracks"!

[Big_Boy_4005]

Minneapolis and St Paul lost their streetcars in 1954, but for many years at least 2 of the car barns served on as bus garages.

The Lake Street barn/garage in Minneapolis, and the Snelling Avenue in St Paul are the ones I remember. Snelling was actually a part of a much larger complex where the Twin City Lines built most of the streetcars they ever used, including cars that they built for other cities. The shops were torn down, and the land is now a small mall. The car barn which sat on the southwest corner of the property remained in use as a bus garage and office until just a couple of years ago, when it too was torn down. Now it appears to be something of a bus graveyard, with a mix of old buses rusting outside for all to see.

I haven't been to Minneapolis in so long, I don't know the fate of the Lake Street facility. It was still there last time I looked.

[espeefoamer]

In Los Angeles near 54th & Avalon there was a bus garage that was an ex trolley barn.I saw this in 1975,I don't know if it is still there.

[Big_Boy_4005]

QUOTE: Originally posted by mudchicken

Denver's horsecar barns are commercial businesses & restaurants and the Denver Tramway powerhouse is now a wilderness outfitter's flagship store.

Ah yes, the powerhouse!!! Once the Forney Museum, and home to the locomotive from which I took my screen name, now REI. I spent many Friday nights there in the early 80's, shoveling dirt and rubble, and doing general construction, all in the name of building a model railroad. Another forum member, who shall remain nameless, was actually the mastermind of the project.

Remember the night Skippy jackhammered his toe? Inside joke for the mystery man.[swg]

[Modelcar]

Transit barns {Streetcar & Interurban}....Muncie, In. Since has been used in Manufacturing and maybe warehousing....
Street Cars stopped in: 1931 - Interurbans in: 1941

Anderson, In. streecar barns....Some commercial use since but not sure what.

[daveklepper]

Salem street in Summerville, MA, is a bus garage that used to be a streetcar barn used by both Boston Eevated and the Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway, the latter for the through service from the Sullivan Sq. El Station to Stonham. I think the Watertown bus garage was the streetcar barn there, serving the through line to the Park Street Subway, and the lines to Harvard Sq and to Central Sq

[daveklepper]

Boston area: Salem Street, Sommerville (used by streetcars of both Boston El and Eastern Mass), Watertown, North Cambridge (now trackless trolley).

New York: Kingsbridge (northen end of Manhattan), West Farms (Bronx), Foot of Main Street, Yonkers, East New York (Brooklyn)

Washington, DC: Georgetown

New Haven: James Street

[mersenne6]

Avon Lake, Ohio. The main buildings in the Avon Lake shopping center are trolley barns. If you look off to the west, across the power company property ,you can still see right-of-way grading...and the town has an Electric Avenue which, I understand, used to be the high speed interurban main line.

[Modelcar]

....Meyersdale, Pa....Street car barns: Saw them a few years ago but do not know what use they serve since.

[FThunder11]

In Colorado Springs there is an old Roundhouse that belonged to Rock Island and older roads before that that is not a Pottery place and the tracks are still in the ground, that whole area of town has tracks buried beneath the streets...POTTERY???

[choochin3]

Here in Baltimore the MTAs main bus shop used to be the Baltimore Traction Co. Carrol Park Shops and Carbarns.
This complex is huge! It takes up a whole city block or two.
Most of the buildings are still used going by photos I have seen.
My Grandfather used to work for the BTC working in the overhead trolley lines.

Cheers,
Carl T.

[Anonymous]

That roundhouse in Colorado Springs is Colorado Midland original equipment.

[Anonymous]

Clevelands Harvard DOT gararges used to be trolley barns..Now they take care of the citys streets. Problem was with a lot of trolley companys is that they were forced to take of there streets that they ran on including snow plowing.

[MP57313]

QUOTE: Originally posted by daveklepper
Harvard Sq and to Central Sq

...in Cambridge, MA! When I lived there in the early 70s, the buses had an underground terminal at Harvard Sq., and one of the approach ramps still had rails in the pavement.
Further east, on Mass Ave. east of Central Sq., there was a "wye" in the street at one of the intersections.

Meanwhile, in SoCal, the bus depot at Pico and Rimpau was a Los Angeles Transit Lines (yellow car) terminal, and in the early 80s you could still see paved-over rails there. I revisited the site a few years ago and you can't really see the rails anymore (but the platform configuration is still "trolley-ish".

[Anonymous]

Shamoking PA up until the 80's. Philadelphia has or had several. Hershey also until at least the late 70's.

[daveklepper]

In connection with the Red Rapid Transit Line's extension to Alweif and the sale of the Bennet Street carbarn and rapid transit yars to the Kennedy Library of Harvard U., Harvard Square Station has been heavily rebuilt. But the trolley buses from and to North Cambridge and Watertown and Waverly still have and underground station platform in each direction. At certain times the diesel buses to Arlington Heights use these tunnels also. I'm not sure how much visible track is left. One other diesel bus line uses the tunnels in one direction only, the one-way street system makes its use in the other direction a problem.

[Anonymous]

For years after streetcars were discontinued in Rockford IL, city buses were parked in the old car barn on Kishwaukee Street, one block south of East State Street. However, I believe the building now houses a satellite television studio.

[BR60103]

In Toronto:
Landsdown and Coxwell barns (until recently).
Eglinton (over the subway station -- now being redeveloped.)
In Kitchener, the car barn was used as a bus depot throughout their trolley bus era, but disappeared sometime since then. It was located at the south end loop and trolley buses actually ran through it going north.

[Jetrock]

In Sacramento, CA, the Regional Transit offices are still located in what used to be the old PG&E trolley shops building. There are even paintings of the front of old two-truck Birneys on the side of the buildings where there used to be big doors for the streetcars. Supposedly there are still tracks inside the building in spots.

The current repair/painting/washing facility stands on the ground that used to be the main trolley barn, across the street from the other barn, although that one is no longer around. When the line first began its transition to buses (originally by PG&E, then completely by National City Lines), buses were stored in the former trolley barn.

[Anonymous]

Jamestown Bus garage was in use from from the 1890s to 1976. It is now a shopping center reusing most of the building. The place were the buses are
now incendently is still referred to as a Bus "Barn" recalling the Horse pulled trolleys.

[RJSillars]

Originally posted by Dunkirkeriestation

About 2 years ago I was in Worchester(?) Mass. I had to go to the local bus garage for something. The Trolley tracks were still in the floor of the garage eevn though they did not have trolleys for 60 years!.
Other towns that i can think of who Bus garages used to be Trolley barns are,

Burlington VT- Vermont transit(Now Greyhound) on Winooski used to be a trolley barn.
Akron OH--Moved 6 years ago to new garage next door
Woodhill Garage Cleveland OH
Not sure on Buffalo or Jamestown NY?
Any others?

[SORRY The Woodhill facility never had streetcars! The bus garage there was built new on the site of the National Mallable foundry (made RR castings and couplers etc.) The streetcar Woodhill garage was quite a bit south where Woodhill becomes E.93rd. A housing project and high rise site are now on that site. The Brooklyn Garage though was built for street cars and still stands. The Hayden garage stands on the site of the old Windemere Car House. The Central Shops are now used by the Cleveland Water Department. (Some blocks east of the current Harvard bus garage) The former cable shop still stands at the SE corner of Euclid and E. 71st. Another support building is attached to a Hilton Hotel on Carneigie downtown. A long abandoned car house still stood some years ago by the W&LE crossing of Miles road and another remenent of a car house stood near E.55th and Hsrvard. I haven't been near eather site in a while. Interestingly the University Circle bus service uses the site of the old Lakeview car house and parts of those buildings were likely prts of the old carhouse.

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