Trolleys

Philadelphia, public transit, youtube June 25th, 2008

Via Andrew Chalfen, here’s some footage of Philadelphia trolleys dating to the 1950s.

The first video features the West Philadelphia trolleys and the El. At this time I believe none of the est Philly tunnels had been built yet, so there are some great scenes of the trolleys circling 30th Street Station and cruising past the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania:

Here’s some footage of the Liberty bell line which ran (I believe) from 69th Street Terminal to Allentown, at a speed of 80 MPH. Look at her go:

For more info on this line, visit Philly Trolley Tracks. Unfortunately, the site doesn’t have separate urls for each topic, so scroll down on the front page until you get to “Suburban Trolleys” and the “Liberty Bell” line:

The Lehigh Valley Transit Company provided trolley service from Philadelphia, through Norristown to Allentown, PA from 1912 to September of 1951. Riders boarded Liberty Bell cars at the P&W Railway’s elevated station at Main and Swede Streets. LVT trolleys bound for Philadelphia operated over the the P&W (now Route 100) high-speed line to Upper Darby, where patrons transferred to Market Frankford El trains. LVT trolleys bound for points north followed tracks on Airy and Markley Streets in Norristown, to just north of Johnson Highway and Swede Road, where they curved off to the right to run on high-speed right-of-way. The Liberty Bell followed this pattern through Lansdale, Souderton, Sellersville, Quakertown, and Allentown: it ran like a local streetcar through the towns, and like a high-speed railroad between towns.

Finally, Reading trolleys. I don’t know much about Reading at all, so I have little to add. Across all of these videos however, it’s interesting to note that the trolley right-of-way is kept segregated from the roadway used by cars, the two transport modes complementing each other. In these days of high gas and congested interstates, wouldn’t it be nice to make long distance commutes by trolley?

One Response to “Trolleys”

  1. Kinmo Says:
    June 25th, 2008 at 6:23 pm

    Hey, check it out, at one time Philly ran some of K.C.’s oldies but goodies. http://www.phillytrolley.org/tracks4.html

    Scroll down to “Good used cars”.

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