The Streetcars, Part I

 

 

If you were a child of the 50's and lived in Pittsburgh, you can reminisce with me about the cities wonderful streetcars, and your experience of riding those red and white cars of yesteryear.

 

Streetcars also known as trolleys, were our main source of transportation.  The family car was used for family activities. 

 

In the fifties there were not as many cars on the road as there are today.  For most people, the streetcars were used to travel to and from work.  There were plenty of streetcar stops where you waited to board your ride for your destination.  The stops and tracks would be on be on both sides of the street.  Sometimes it would take almost an hour to get to work, thirty minutes more than by car, because of all the stops the trolley had to make along the way. 

 

The long ride home from work could easily hypnotize you to dozing off into  a light sleep, but I would usually awaken suddenly, almost miraculously, two stops before I had to get off the car.

 

The fee to ride the trolleys was minimal, and affordable.  It sure beat paying for a taxi!  Since the trolleys had tracks all over the city, and sometimes there were tracks that rode to the edges of the suburbs, where the buses would take over transportation.  If you were going across town into another borough, you could purchase a transfer ticket for a small extra fee to transfer to another trolley to continue on to another borough. 

 

In those days trolleys did not have air conditioning.  In the mornings, it was usually a lot cooler than the afternoon. In winter, you could feel the heating surrounding the car’s baseboard, as you stepped up on the platform to enter the car.  It felt so good to come in our of the cold to a warm and toasty car.