Episode 50: Boonsboro Trolley Station Museum

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Hi, I'm Ayla Sparks and this is Curator's Choice, a podcast for history nerds and museum lovers.

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From ancient relics to modern marvels, each episode of this show features a new museum and a curator's choice of some amazing artifacts housed there.

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These guardians of history will share insights, anecdotes and the often untold stories that breathe life into the artifacts they protect.

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Thanks for tuning in to this Mighty Oak Media production and enjoy the show.

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So trolleys I'm not going to lie.

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Whenever I think of trolley, I immediately just think of San Francisco.

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No idea that trolleys were even on this side of the country.

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And wow, they were incredible here.

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Trolleys were a big deal nationwide, well, worldwide actually.

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You do think of San Francisco and a lot of people think of the cable cars, which are technically not trolleys.

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You're right, that's exactly what I think of.

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Now, san Francisco does have trolleys.

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They're along the wharf, along the waterline.

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They're along the wharf, along the water line, but cable cars, which is what most people think of, actually run by a constantly moving metal cable under the street and they just grab onto it.

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That's why they all go the same speed.

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Trolleys get their name from the overhead pole.

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There's a single pole the little arm that reaches out, yeah.

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They're a wheel or a carbon slider at the end that rubs against a copper wire and that wire provides electricity.

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Different trolleys were a little bit different but on average 550 to 650 volts of DC power it's a lot of electricity Provides the electricity to operate motors in the wheels and each trolley can be individually controlled.

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It's basically an extension cord and the same thing.

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That eventually evolved into larger, mainline high-speed electric trains.

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We have today Some of the same technology.

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It was developed in Europe early in the railroad era, 1830s.

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They were already experimenting with electric rail cars.

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Nothing really happened.

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There were a couple semi-successful experiments over the years, but it was 1888.

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A gentleman named Frank Sprague, who had worked for Thomas Edison, got his own ideas, studied other inventors in the world, especially from Europe, who were also experimenting with electricity, came up with his own ideas and designs for electric motors.

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He set up the first successful electric trolley system in Richmond, virginia, in the US, in the US, in Richmond, in Richmond.

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Now there was one in the Baltimore area that was already running, but it was kind of an experimental thing still and it wasn't self-propelled.

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It had a little engine that ran on the electricity that pulled a horse wagon.

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So a lot of towns had horse-drawn wagons that were running on rails but not self-propelled, so it was sort of an electric horse wagon at the time.

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So Frank Sprague's designs actually incorporated it all into one vehicle, and not only did it work well, but it also went up hills, and that's how the local system came about.

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So by the time local people were getting involved, there were hundreds of trolley lines across the country.

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So people were very familiar with trolleys.

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People were very familiar with trolleys.

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The trolley systems were big, were small and I should point out there are two types of trolley system and it comes into play with some of the technicalities here.

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There are streetcar systems, which are usually smaller, lighter, run in the city streets, maybe connect to some suburbs.

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They were the ones that lasted the longest, honestly, and those are mostly for people.

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Those are mostly for people.

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Sometimes they'd have freight.

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Occasionally in cities they'd even have funeral cars that were just for carrying funeral parties with the casket and everything Very, very interesting.

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That is crazy.

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Were they like all black.

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They came in different colors I don't think I've seen a color photo but some of them would have, like the door on the side to slide the casket in, sometimes be glass, like a wagon hearse would be a glass or the back of a modern hearse so you could see the casket go by and then the rest of the trolley was seating for the funeral party and they just go straight to the cemetery.

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The local system didn't have that but they did pass a couple cemeteries so it's possible they did have rate for bodies.

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Oh my gosh, this is crazy.

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Then there's also inner urban lines, and inner urban lines were trolley systems designed to connect towns to other towns, and that's what we had here in Central Maryland was an inner urban system that also ran streetcars, and so that's the definitive point with it.

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This was a major interurban line for its type.

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It was a rural interurban, one of the largest rural interurban systems in the country and the last in the mid-Atlantic to operate a schedule.

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Other interurban lines a lot of people think of, if they're familiar with trolleys, would be things like the lines around Chicago or New York, where it's big, high-speed electric trolleys that are later replaced by elevated trains or high-speed trains or just retired altogether.

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But those had hundreds of millions of passengers and were constantly running multiple units that were connected together.

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This was a single trolley running through farmland from town to town, which was a lot of those.

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They popped up everywhere.

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There wasn't already railroad service and a lot of them only lasted a few years.

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And they were short, right, they didn't go very far.

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Some of them went from one town to another, connected two or three towns.

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Here in Central Maryland at its peak, over two dozen communities were connected by this trolley line.

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Well, and what's really interesting, you were telling me in the museum itself, the way that Lowell-Boonesboro got their trolley line started is a pretty cool story.

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So there were two different companies here there was the Fredericton Middletown Railway Company and there was the Hdletown Railway Company and there was the Hagerstown Railway.

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And how?

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For people who aren't familiar with Maryland, how far away are these two towns?

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They're like maybe 25 miles.

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Roughly 20 to 30 miles.

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Yeah, yeah, today you can drive the difference in about half hour to 40 minutes.

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It's not too far away, but at the time it was really hard to get from town to town.

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The National Road was really the only way to get to a lot of these communities and it had fallen into disrepair.

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So for the people of Middletown whose livelihood depended on the National Road they were a farm community, they had been a stagecoach location, so they had depended on people coming to town, stopping trading stagecoaches, getting a bite to eat, staying the night in between their stagecoaches on their trip.

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The decline of the road because of railroads and, to a lesser point, canals, meant that the town's economy was starting to struggle and the farmers were seeing people in other communities along railroads get their goods transported to the bigger cities and making more money, while the people in Middletown were looking at several hours just to go the six miles from their town to the city of Frederick just because the road was in bad shape and they had to go over a mountain.

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So people got together, started a company, tried to get investors and couldn't get anybody involved from outside of town, and so the company spent three years just selling stock to local businessmen, farmers, local families and eventually had enough money to get some secondhand supplies and borrow some equipment and start building in 1896.

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So they started in 1893 with their fundraising and began construction in 1896 and finally got something running in the middle late August in that year to the top of the mountain.

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And where were they trying to get to?

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To Middletown.

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Well, so, from where, though?

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From Frederick, from?

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the city.

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So they were trying to take it from Middletown to Frederick to sell all the goods To sell their goods in Frederick or connect with the railroads that were already in Frederick.

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So there were a lot of options.

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Once you got to the city, you had a lot of options on where you could sell your goods, either locally or go to Baltimore or go to basically any other city in the country.

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You couldn't do that if you couldn't get over the mountain before the goods spoiled.

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So the construction began.

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Instead of starting in Middletown, where the money came from, they started in Frederick, where the city wasn't all that interested but was willing to allow it to get built, and the construction finally opened the line to Braddock Heights, which was the top of the mountain.

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There was no town, nothing, up there.

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It wasn't even called Braddock Heights at the time, it was just the top of Catoctin Mountain, and the opening day of service just to the top of the mountain for picnics was packed.

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People in Frederick wanted to get to the top of the mountain.

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A little while later there was a extension to the county fairgrounds because the county fair took place the next month and 16,000 tickets were sold and they only owned three trolleys at the time.

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That's a little bit of a discrepancy.

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Yes, 16,000 tickets were sold to get people to the fair and it was a four-day event and how many people can normally fit on a trolley?

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About 40 at a time for the trolleys they had.

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So they did not have nearly enough.

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They did not have.

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They were able to do it, but it was a lot of work and those trolleys really were put to the test.

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It wasn't until October of that year that Middletown was finally reached and they finally built a station outside of town at the top of a hill where women complained that they couldn't go into the city in high heels because they had to climb this really steep hill to get to the station.

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So they eventually built a new station closer to town and people were happy.

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Because anyone who would have been coming from Frederick out here, they would be coming out here for more of like a good time, enjoyment, pleasure area yeah, out to the country, rather than the goods from Middletown going to Frederick.

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So you're kind of having to comply or meet the conveniences of two different kinds of people.

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Yes, exactly, and anybody going from Middletown to Frederick.

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They were going into the big city.

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They wanted to be dressed up, they were going for shopping.

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They didn't want to have to have a whole lot of strain to carry things back from their shopping trip.

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But the main reason for the line from Middletown to Frederick was freight.

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So one of the three trolleys they purchased was able to pull little wagons over the mountain and the company claimed to be the first trolley company in the country to pull freight over a mountain with electric power.

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Eventually you'd have big railroads pulling big freight trains with massive electric locomotives out west for a brief time.

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But this was a significant advance.

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But it's something that they claimed.

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We've never been able to prove for sure that they were.

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We're not the first to pull freight, but they were possibly the first to pull freight over a mountain with electric power.

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But at the same time all that was happening in Hagerstown.

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Two investors from Harrisburg, pennsylvania, saw Hagerstown as a way to make money.

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They had a lot of friends with a lot of money.

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They got a lot of money together and they built this state-of-the-art streetcar line.

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It was an interurban but they considered it streetcar between Hagerstown and the nearby community of Williamsport along the Potomac River which had a lot of industry growing.

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And when was this?

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This was at the same time, 1896.

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So they started their fundraising after Frederick began or the Middletown line began construction.

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They started service between Hagerstown and Williamsport two weeks before Frederick began, so they started after they had enough money to finish first.

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They were successful.

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They had a lot of investment.

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They started expanding immediately.

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By 1902, they had reached Boonesboro here and the idea was actually to reach the battlefield at Antietam, sharpsburg, because that battlefields were beginning to become a tourist destination.

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At the time it already was.

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Some of the steam railroads in the area already had promoted tourism.

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I believe it was the Norfolk and Western Railroad had built a station not far from Sharpsburg where the battlefield is, and they had actually built a sidewalk from their station into the battlefield where the town didn't really have a sidewalk except for in town, just because they had so many tourists coming.

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So they thought that it was going to be extended all the way out there.

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We don't really know why they stopped here in Boonesboro and never continued.

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They had started surveying and grading and then just stopped.

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But Boonesboro had farm goods.

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We had cantaloupes and raspberries and peaches, which were the main exports from town.

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There were a lot of stores here in Boonesboro and so a lot of goods would come in by trolley as well.

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They transported the mail here from Hagerstown, and a lot of people coming into town to go shopping or leaving Boonesboro to go into Hagerstown to go to the theaters or the department stores became main fares for the trolley.

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And apparently Boonesboro had some spectacular melons.

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Yes, I have never seen any photographs showing exactly how big, but the cantaloupes that were grown here were said to be some of the most delicious cantaloupes ever grown and could have been, in some cases, as large as a basketball.

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I can't substantiate that with any proof.

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But they were very popular from the time they were very popular, at least regionally, as one of the best cantaloupes in the country.

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But you won't see them now you won't see them now.

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I have been told by the descendants of some of the farmers that the original strain of seeds was lost years ago.

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It's a shame.

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They still grow cantaloupes here and they are still delicious cantaloupes, but they're not quite the world-class cantaloupes that you hear about from the past.

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That's fantastic.

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So you have Hagerstown kind of more for the theater and the entertainment business.

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You have Boonesboro.

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That is really for trade.

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Agriculture trade, still passengers, there were still things to do around here.

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People were still coming here on their way to Antietam.

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You just have to take a horse the rest of the way, or a vehicle of some kind.

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So after the success of both of these two different trolley lines, eventually they merge.

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Yes.

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So the Hagerstown Company wanted to expand.

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They actually wanted to buy the Frederick Company.

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The Frederick Company wasn't interested in selling, but they there was a little town in the middle between Hagerstown and Frederick known as Myersville that had also built their own trolley line to connect the Middletown line.

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They sold their track to Hagerstown's company because they wanted a connection to Hagerstown.

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And so the Hagerstown company, halfway between Hagerstown and Boonesboro, started building over the mountain to connect to Myersville and on December 1st 1904, they were able to take the first Hagerstown trolley all the way to Frederick and became the first through service Took two hours where by horse and wagon, unless you were taking a stagecoach or a very fast horse, you could spend a couple days taking that trip by the road.

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So massive improvement.

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It was a massive improvement.

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It was a little pricey so you didn't have everybody using it.

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A lot of people only used it for special occasions.

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But then you did, over time, have people who became commuters because it was cost effective for them.

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And one thing I didn't mention at the museum it also became the way for students to get to schools.

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There were no school buses at the time and so the schools would subsidize or, if they weren't subsidizing.

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The parents could buy cheap tickets and you'd have one room school houses in the area for early grades.

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But if you wanted to let your child go to high school or if you were going to college, you had to get to the city and so you could get a student ticket, a student pass, to go into the city to get further education.

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And so it opened up the opportunity for families that couldn't otherwise get to better schooling because it wasn't mandatory and it wasn't provided, but it was free or cheap if they could get to it.

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Suddenly you're opening up these other opportunities for poorer families that didn't own their own vehicle to allow education for their children.

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What would it have been like when you were actually riding one of these trolleys?

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Was it kind of like, I imagine, a train car today, where you kind of purchase your ticket, you sit and ride and enjoy yourself till you get there.

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You can have snacks?

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There must not have been a flight attendant walking up and down the trolley line.

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No flight attendant, no snacks.

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No snacks, you could bring your own snacks.

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Okay, the trolleys were very much like a regular train car.

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They would have a controller on both ends so that the driver would be on one end of the car or the other.

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They'd come to a dead end so the seats actually could change direction.

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They had little handles so in between trips the driver would change what direction the seats were facing.

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Most of the trolleys in the area had either a wood bench or what was called vertan, which is a wicker-like varnish material.

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It's not wicker but it resembles wicker.

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It's varnished.

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It would be padded seats made of I think it might be bamboo strips.

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That was easy to clean, but once it started breaking it would start catching on your clothes, so they had to keep it well-maintained.

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Usually it would get coated with a lot of lacquer to keep it nice and varnished.

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In later years they started replacing it with fake leather material.

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But you'd have a lot of rocking back and forth.

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It was kind of loud.

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You'd have that clickety-clack of regular railroad tracks you'd expect.

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How fast were they going?

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They'd go about 20 to 25 miles per hour on level ground, which was actually pretty fast at first, because we're talking turn of the century, when cars had a speed limit of eight miles per hour.

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You feel like they're riding a roller coaster.

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Yes, which at the time steam trains were going a lot faster by then.

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But for trolley service that was pretty significant.

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You're running on electricity, about 600 volts, as I said, and it could take hills, which was why they went with trolleys, because there are two mountain ranges between Frederick and Hagerstown, so they could handle the steep climbs, they could handle sharp turns.

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The sharp turns were the loudest point because you get a very loud squeal of the wheels as you're making those turns, especially in the city.

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It's like when you're in a parking garage and you're making a slow turn.

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Yes, yes, a little bit louder than that, though.

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It can be almost deafening.

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There are some places you can go ride trolleys around the country and experience this for yourself.

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But you'd either get a prepaid ticket at a station there were stations in some of the major communities.

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A lot of times you could get a round trip if you were going to go and come back.

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If you were paying for a trip that involved trading trolleys at a point you would get a transfer.

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So you get a little ticket that you could hand over.

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That was good for the next passing trolley, so you couldn't stop and enjoy yourself in a layover and then get on another trolley.

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You had to get on the next one or else it would be void.

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But if you didn't have a prepaid ticket, you could wave down a trolley anywhere along the line and they'd stop and let you in.

00:18:55.851 --> 00:18:58.769
You'd just pay the cash fare for whatever the closest station was.

00:18:58.868 --> 00:18:59.308
Oh, wow.

00:18:59.308 --> 00:19:07.380
So this is perfect, because if you were to be going to one of these trolley stations, that happens to be what the museum is.

00:19:07.660 --> 00:19:12.906
Yes, so tell us a little bit about the museum.

00:19:12.906 --> 00:19:19.038
This trolley stop, so what we have the museum housed in is the last surviving purpose-built trolley station in Washington County.

00:19:19.305 --> 00:19:20.991
And it almost didn't exist.

00:19:21.065 --> 00:19:22.170
It almost didn't exist.

00:19:22.170 --> 00:19:28.738
The town of Boonesboro acquired the property after a hardware store that had been here closed.

00:19:28.738 --> 00:19:36.375
It was part of a plan to redevelop the park that's just behind the property and there were a lot of derelict buildings that were cleansed safe.

00:19:36.375 --> 00:19:40.055
So they had contracted to bulldoze.

00:19:40.055 --> 00:19:46.005
There's now a road that wasn't there that goes alongside the station bulldoze.

00:19:46.005 --> 00:19:54.930
There's now a road that wasn't there that goes alongside the station, and the town manager at the time had decided to get in touch with a local historian to look into whether any of the buildings had historical significance.

00:19:54.930 --> 00:20:01.494
And gets a call from the historian one day saying yes, one of the buildings is actually the last trolley station in the county.

00:20:01.494 --> 00:20:13.613
So, knowing that the bulldozer had just been unloaded, the town manager ran down the street and jumped in front of the bulldozer when it was five to 10 feet away from the building, with his hands up waving for them to stop.

00:20:13.613 --> 00:20:19.694
Otherwise, if he had been another minute, the station probably would have just been knocked down and been beyond saving.

00:20:19.964 --> 00:20:26.277
And it sounds like a dramatization, but you actually have people who are a part of the museum now, who remember seeing him running down the street.

00:20:27.086 --> 00:20:29.450
Yes, yes, so I have been guaranteed.

00:20:29.450 --> 00:20:33.497
That's exactly how it happened, even though it sounds like something out of a movie or a TV show.

00:20:33.657 --> 00:20:34.398
That's fantastic.

00:20:34.398 --> 00:20:35.807
Yeah, so the museum?

00:20:35.807 --> 00:20:38.134
Well, the trolley station is saved.

00:20:38.545 --> 00:20:40.950
It is saved and it was restored.

00:20:40.950 --> 00:20:52.088
There was a architectural class in Baltimore that came out, did a study on both buildings, actually the trolley station and the main hardware store building which will be the National Road Museum right next door.

00:20:52.088 --> 00:21:04.656
They gave recommendations for architectural details, suggested where an original wall that had been removed should go back in place and what it should be built out of, and just to study on the property itself.

00:21:04.656 --> 00:21:10.958
And those recommendations were used between 2005 and 2009 when the station was restored.

00:21:11.505 --> 00:21:15.876
And so now, whenever you come in, the first thing that you encounter is the waiting room.

00:21:15.876 --> 00:21:20.692
That is quite small, I would say so cozy, I guess would be a preferential term.

00:21:21.144 --> 00:21:23.173
Well, it is very small.

00:21:23.173 --> 00:21:24.651
It would have had benches.

00:21:24.651 --> 00:21:26.567
It would have had a ticket desk.

00:21:26.567 --> 00:21:30.497
We've represented as best as we can right now what it would have looked like.

00:21:30.497 --> 00:21:32.147
Inside we have a stove.

00:21:32.147 --> 00:21:34.315
It's a little bit larger than the stove that would have been in there.

00:21:34.315 --> 00:21:44.715
It was probably a potbelly stove originally, but we have a relatively locally cast stove in there to represent the only heat the building would have had at the time.

00:21:44.715 --> 00:21:47.095
But it was an improvement over what people had.

00:21:47.095 --> 00:21:49.204
We believe the building was built around 1910.

00:21:49.204 --> 00:22:04.448
That was in response to a lot of complaints from people who even went in the newspaper locally that passengers stated that they were suffering from having the floor as a platform or the ground as a platform and the sky as a roof.

00:22:04.448 --> 00:22:09.614
So if you were waiting for the trolley you had to hide in one of the local businesses if it was raining.

00:22:09.614 --> 00:22:15.560
The office was in an old factory that was nearby but not where the actual stop was.

00:22:19.664 --> 00:22:21.528
So you could get a ticket here but you didn't have anywhere to wait for the trolley.

00:22:21.528 --> 00:22:27.799
Well, it makes sense for the town itself to have more of a station, because then you can also kind of increase the amount of work, well, the amount of commerce happening there.

00:22:27.924 --> 00:22:39.820
Yes, so the station has the little waiting room in the corner, and the rest of the building was used to store freight in between transporting between vehicles, wagons or trucks and the trolleys.

00:22:39.820 --> 00:22:47.818
The trolleys actually came to the front of the building, while vehicles could pull up to the side and unload goods or load goods between the building.

00:22:48.325 --> 00:22:49.027
And underground.

00:22:49.027 --> 00:22:51.535
In front you still have some of the original rail lines.

00:22:51.644 --> 00:22:56.596
Yes, the freight siding part of the freight siding is still in place under the front grass.

00:22:56.596 --> 00:23:00.724
Eventually we hope to expose it so people can actually see that original rail.

00:23:00.724 --> 00:23:11.576
But we will have a representation of the passenger platform track that was removed when it was retired sometime soon, hopefully within the next year.

00:23:11.984 --> 00:23:22.439
So within the timeline of having these two companies begin and then kind of merge and then merge into one gigantically long trolley line, when does the station come into play?

00:23:22.825 --> 00:23:25.353
This station comes in right before the merger.

00:23:25.353 --> 00:23:34.816
So this would have still been a product of the Hagerstown Railway Company, which was still quite a large company, but it was accruing debts at that point.

00:23:34.816 --> 00:23:37.712
So they were trying to expand, trying to improve.

00:23:37.712 --> 00:23:39.186
At the same time.

00:23:39.186 --> 00:23:44.556
This building was built though the Frederick Company, the Frederick of Middletown, under the management of a man named Emery Koblentz.

00:23:44.445 --> 00:23:50.926
The Frederick of Middletown under the management of a man named Emery Koblentz, who was a Middletown area banker and businessman involved in a lot of other ventures.

00:23:50.926 --> 00:23:54.417
He had become president of the company in 1905.

00:23:54.417 --> 00:23:58.390
He took the company and started investing in a lot of infrastructure.

00:23:58.390 --> 00:24:16.327
So they built a new Frederick Terminal Station, new offices, new trolley maintenance building, replaced a lot of bridges and bought a steam railroad that went from Frederick to Thurmont and converted that to electric, which over doubled the size of their system and connected them with a Baltimore to Cumberland railroad line.

00:24:16.327 --> 00:24:31.307
So he was responsible for a lot of expansion and the company actually got renamed to the Frederick Railroad and he started buying power companies in the area, started selling power to communities and expanding the power holdings of the company.

00:24:31.307 --> 00:24:43.029
Since they were already running the trolleys off of electrical power, it just made sense to start selling their excess electrical power to people and expanding that service and making more money that way.

00:24:43.451 --> 00:24:48.653
So were they actually generating power that they then used for the trolley, or the trolley used itself generated power?

00:24:49.085 --> 00:24:50.290
They generated power.

00:24:50.290 --> 00:24:53.213
So trolley companies would start coal power plants.

00:24:53.213 --> 00:24:56.534
The Hagerstown Company built their first one in Williamsport.

00:24:56.534 --> 00:25:14.334
Two years later they had to build a bigger one outside of Hagerstown and the Frederick Company bought power from an existing gas and power company that was very small in Frederick before two years later building their own power plant near Middletown and then they bought the one that had been providing power to them.

00:25:15.085 --> 00:25:17.845
But the trolleys didn't take that much power, so they had excess power.

00:25:17.884 --> 00:25:30.055
They had excess power, they had to generate AC power and transmit that, because AC power, which is what we're used to using today in our homes, that can be sent over long distances without really losing energy.

00:25:30.316 --> 00:25:35.559
But the trolleys ran on DC power which after a while it starts to lose its energy.

00:25:35.559 --> 00:25:40.676
So they couldn't go more than about a mile before they had to get an influx of fresh power.

00:25:40.676 --> 00:25:47.011
So they would build a power substation every two miles and run the power poles along the trolley line.

00:25:47.011 --> 00:25:56.198
And every two miles at these substations the AC electric which was generated in large amounts was converted to DC power to run the trolleys.

00:25:56.198 --> 00:25:59.916
And then they had all that extra AC and DC power they could work with.

00:25:59.916 --> 00:26:07.292
So they started wiring nearby houses, started running new power lines to nearby communities and farms.

00:26:07.292 --> 00:26:21.989
I like to point out that in the Midwest and some of the Western communities there were areas where you didn't see electricity until the 1950s because it didn't make sense for a power company to run all those wires for a small town.

00:26:21.989 --> 00:26:34.775
But where there was a trolley line you always have the opportunity for electricity and farmers here in our area before 1900 could have upgraded to electric motors if they wanted to for water pumps and electric lighting.

00:26:35.088 --> 00:26:36.184
Where there's a trolley, there's a way.

00:26:36.184 --> 00:26:37.529
Where there's a trolley, there's a way.

00:26:37.529 --> 00:26:40.553
So then they started selling.

00:26:40.553 --> 00:26:45.372
The trolley companies started selling electric things for houses.

00:26:45.673 --> 00:26:48.192
Yes, they started appliance stores.

00:26:48.192 --> 00:26:51.955
They started delivering catalogs from partner companies like Westinghouse.

00:26:51.955 --> 00:26:55.694
You could order appliances from the trolley company.

00:26:55.694 --> 00:27:03.134
They'd have their name stamped on the back of recipe books that would be given out, so you'd know you could get your kitchen appliances from them.

00:27:03.134 --> 00:27:07.752
And you could even get it delivered by trolley if you lived along the trolley line.

00:27:08.273 --> 00:27:15.125
So these trolleys were kind of like meccas for business almost they were, and I mean like so Braddock Heights, the top of that mountain in between.

00:27:15.125 --> 00:27:20.929
Didn't that become some huge resort situation so that the trolleys could take more passengers to and from?

00:27:21.391 --> 00:27:21.590
Yes.

00:27:21.590 --> 00:27:25.886
So a lot of railroad companies at the time were starting amusement parks.

00:27:25.886 --> 00:27:30.526
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad had an amusement park at Harper's Ferry on an island.

00:27:30.526 --> 00:27:40.633
There was a park called Penmar on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, just northeast of Hagerstown, that the Western Maryland Railroad owned.

00:27:40.633 --> 00:27:42.425
And there were other parks around the country.

00:27:42.425 --> 00:27:46.272
Trolley companies saw that as an opportunity as well.

00:27:46.272 --> 00:27:50.105
So you had all these parks pop up, called electric parks or trolley parks.

00:27:50.105 --> 00:27:52.270
There were several in the area.

00:27:52.270 --> 00:27:54.035
There's actually some in DC area.

00:27:54.035 --> 00:27:56.188
Glen Elko Park is probably the most famous.

00:27:56.188 --> 00:27:57.731
That was a trolley park.

00:27:57.731 --> 00:27:59.297
It was served by the trolleys.

00:27:59.297 --> 00:28:02.490
Passengers would ride the trolley to get to the park and go home.

00:28:02.970 --> 00:28:04.413
So Braddock Heights was one of those.

00:28:04.413 --> 00:28:20.332
There was nothing but farmland on the top of the mountain when they first started talking about the trolley line in 1893, they built a three-story observation tower so you could go up to the top of the mountain on the road, look down and see the city of Frederick, look the other direction and see Middletown.

00:28:20.332 --> 00:28:38.885
So around that observation tower on this farmland the company executives got together, bought the top of the mountain, parceled it out into lots, renamed the top of the mountain Braddock Heights after General Braddock who had passed through one of his failed expedition to Fort Duquesne.

00:28:38.885 --> 00:28:57.011
Along with George Washington, they started this resort community which had buildings built to resemble beach homes, where you could go to the boardwalk and rent a room in a beach house overlooking the ocean, except you were on the top of a mountain, similar breeze, nice and cool on a summer day.

00:28:58.085 --> 00:29:13.311
And they started an amusement park right on the edge of town, on the highest point of the mountain, around the observation tower, with a skating rink, a carousel, there was a miniature train ride, a theater, a dance hall, a giant slide just so many attractions.

00:29:13.311 --> 00:29:16.708
At one point there was a playground that included one of the retired trolleys.

00:29:16.708 --> 00:29:18.634
So all of these things.

00:29:18.634 --> 00:29:20.583
And it lasted for a long time.

00:29:20.583 --> 00:29:31.365
The company eventually sold it, either in the late 40s, early 50s, into private ownership, and it lasted, I believe, into the 60s before it finally started to decline and went out of business.

00:29:31.646 --> 00:29:32.308
So what happened?

00:29:32.308 --> 00:29:37.951
I mean, it sounds like trolleys were really big business and they were fantastic, but they're not so much anymore.

00:29:37.951 --> 00:29:40.236
There's nothing left, but what?

00:29:40.236 --> 00:29:41.137
Four trolley cars.

00:29:41.565 --> 00:29:43.148
There are four surviving trolleys.

00:29:43.148 --> 00:29:54.898
A bunch of the original buildings, especially in Frederick County, still stand, but roads the same thing that trolleys took over because of the poor quality of roads.

00:29:54.898 --> 00:29:59.136
Once roads were improved, the automobile became more available.

00:29:59.136 --> 00:30:01.393
The Model T became more affordable.

00:30:01.393 --> 00:30:05.155
Thanks Henry Ford, trolley killer.

00:30:05.645 --> 00:30:13.234
Once the roads were more passable and were more comfortable, people started getting their own automobiles and didn't need the trolleys.

00:30:13.234 --> 00:30:22.137
Trucks started being able to transport goods directly from the farm to the city rather than needing to carry them by wagon from the farm to the trolley and then load it up, and so it became more of a.

00:30:22.137 --> 00:30:26.573
We can go wherever we want when we want, to carry them by wagon from the farm to the trolley and then load it up, and so it became more of a.

00:30:26.573 --> 00:30:31.873
We can go wherever we want when we want, because we have our own vehicle type situation On our own timeline.

00:30:31.873 --> 00:30:43.432
On our own timeline, which that's still why mass transit doesn't thrive in the United States like it does in Europe, because we don't have as close communities and people can do what they want when they want.

00:30:43.884 --> 00:30:55.229
So you have a lot of advertising start appearing and in some of the big cities you had the actual automobile manufacturers start buying up trolley lines and replacing them with buses for their own interests.

00:30:55.229 --> 00:31:11.455
Locally it was literally just because of the fact that the roads were better, and so people didn't see this big electric train that was loud and slower and made a lot of noise and rocked you back and forth.

00:31:11.455 --> 00:31:29.875
It became an eyesore for a lot of people and so by the time they were starting to close the trolley lines, you'd see newspaper articles with pictures of a trolley surrounded by traffic saying soon this eyesore will be gone and people will have the freedom to use the better mode of transport, internal combustion.

00:31:29.875 --> 00:31:48.488
And it's kind of an irony now that we're looking at more environmentally friendly electric vehicles when people really thought that the automobile, the internal combustion gas engine, was replacing the outmoded, useless electric power.

00:31:48.488 --> 00:31:52.617
So we come full circle and realize we were a little bit wrong there.

00:31:53.184 --> 00:31:53.807
Maybe, maybe.

00:31:53.807 --> 00:31:55.894
So Maybe a little bit, a little bit, a little bit.

00:31:55.894 --> 00:32:03.788
So then they kind of started to decommission these trolleys and then eventually it ended in the local area.

00:32:03.788 --> 00:32:04.391
When was that?

00:32:12.105 --> 00:32:14.171
So the main line actually closed during one of the realignments of Route 40.

00:32:14.171 --> 00:32:16.278
So the alternate 40, which is what we have in the area, is the original Route 40.

00:32:16.278 --> 00:32:19.671
The state wanted to build a new Route 40 from Frederick to Hagerstown.

00:32:19.671 --> 00:32:22.855
That was a little bit more of a straight shot because they could do more excavating.

00:32:22.855 --> 00:32:25.580
They could work a little bit better with more roads, make it a little bit more of a straight shot because they could do more excavating.

00:32:25.580 --> 00:32:28.170
They could work a little bit better with more roads, make it a little bit wider without sharp turns.

00:32:28.170 --> 00:32:35.512
And the route they chose happened to cross the trolley line at seven places, five of them being on the slope of the mountain.

00:32:35.512 --> 00:32:43.384
So the state actually came to the company and said we will save you the trouble of going through the abandonment process.

00:32:43.384 --> 00:32:44.463
We'll allow you to abandon right now.

00:32:44.463 --> 00:32:45.189
We'll save you the trouble of going through the abandonment process.

00:32:45.189 --> 00:32:45.576
We'll allow you to abandon right now.

00:32:45.576 --> 00:32:50.481
We'll give you some money if you close the line between Myersville and Funkstown.

00:32:50.481 --> 00:32:52.953
And so the company said, sure, we'll do that.

00:32:52.953 --> 00:33:02.640
And so October of 1938 was the last trip from Frederick to Hagerstown with trolley 172.

00:33:02.640 --> 00:33:09.474
That same day the last trip from Boonesboro to Hagerstown took place with trolley number 151.

00:33:09.474 --> 00:33:13.190
And after that the tracks were torn up, the new highway was built.

00:33:13.190 --> 00:33:23.393
That was the story of the main line and we suddenly were back to two different sections, the original two sections of the line, but this time run by the same company.

00:33:24.125 --> 00:33:31.758
Hagerstown kept their service until after World War II, 1947, august 4th was the last trip from Hagerstown to Williamsport.

00:33:31.758 --> 00:33:39.872
A lot of fanfare, locals, a lot of the retired trolley drivers got together and were posed in front of the trolley with their picture taken.

00:33:39.872 --> 00:33:49.684
Trolley 172 was painted up as the last trolley in Washington County and the last three trolleys in the Hagerstown area went together, went down to Funkstown.

00:33:49.684 --> 00:33:55.736
Everybody got off the trolley and got on one of the buses that was replacing the trolley and rode back to Hagerstown.

00:33:55.736 --> 00:34:10.775
Two of the trolleys were sold to be used as cabins and 172 was taken as the newest trolley they had, was taken over the mountain back to Frederick by truck so that they could replace two trolleys that had been in a crash in Frederick.

00:34:10.775 --> 00:34:12.771
So Middletown came.

00:34:12.771 --> 00:34:18.025
A month later Trolley 172 again became the last trolley from Middletown to Frederick.

00:34:18.025 --> 00:34:23.757
Had tried to get the paint off but you could see those photos from the last month of service in Middletown.

00:34:23.757 --> 00:34:27.996
It's got these scratched out words last trolley in Washington County.

00:34:27.996 --> 00:34:37.492
So the irony is it was the last trolley in Middletown and Washington County with that same paint and that was the last official trip.

00:34:37.492 --> 00:34:51.179
Day later, I recently learned, apparently a group of local rail fans and employees convinced the company to let them take one last trip to Middletown and back, just with them and for the fun of it.

00:34:51.179 --> 00:34:57.505
They took the sign on the front because the trolleys had signs on the ends showing what route it was, on what town it was going to.

00:34:57.505 --> 00:35:00.144
They took the sign and stuck the funeral sign.

00:35:00.144 --> 00:35:06.175
So the last trip between Frederick and Middletown on the original line was the funeral trip of the trolley.

00:35:06.175 --> 00:35:09.860
But that was the last day of September.

00:35:09.880 --> 00:35:30.273
In 1947 was the last official trip to Middletown Trolleys between Frederick and Thurmont, which had been that steam railroad that they bought because of the freight connection with the Western Maryland Railway there and the fact that people could ride the trolleys to Thurmont and then get on a Western Maryland train and go to Penmar Park from there.

00:35:30.273 --> 00:35:32.893
That remained in service for several years.

00:35:32.893 --> 00:35:42.530
In early 1954, the company went to the state, asked if they could retire the Thurmont Line passenger service and replace it with buses.

00:35:42.530 --> 00:35:46.936
And it only took a couple weeks before they were allowed to.

00:35:46.936 --> 00:35:52.655
And February 4th 1954, it was a little bit of a drizzly, rainy February day.

00:35:52.655 --> 00:36:01.085
People got together, watched Car 172 and its sister 171 leave Frederick, went on a round trip up to Thurmont.

00:36:01.085 --> 00:36:01.846
They stopped.

00:36:01.846 --> 00:36:10.400
A number of local radio stations were there and there were speeches at the Western Maryland train station in front of the trolleys.

00:36:10.400 --> 00:36:15.952
And they went back and people were along the trolley truck to see the last trolleys go.

00:36:16.704 --> 00:36:23.925
Hood College, which had actually been built around the trolley line on the edge of Frederick, had been a major customer of the trolley line.

00:36:23.925 --> 00:36:29.217
They actually had their own stop for the girls who went to the then-girls' school.

00:36:29.217 --> 00:36:36.952
A group of girls gathered and sang songs, farewell to the trolley and gave flowers to the company president before they continued.

00:36:36.952 --> 00:36:39.215
Then there was a banquet after they returned.

00:36:39.215 --> 00:36:46.425
Then again a group of employees got permission to do one last trip for themselves who weren't allowed on that last trip.

00:36:46.425 --> 00:36:56.931
But by noon, february 20, 1954, there was no more passenger service on the Hagerstown and Frederick system which I've mentioned interurban lines earlier.

00:36:56.931 --> 00:37:07.947
It was the last interurban line, some say east of Chicago, I like to, at least say, mid-atlantic, the last interurban trolley system to keep a schedule in the United States.

00:37:07.947 --> 00:37:19.597
In this area there were some city systems that remained in service into the 60s Baltimore, philadelphia, dc and a few of them have actually come back since then in smaller capacity.

00:37:19.945 --> 00:37:21.128
So the last four remaining?

00:37:21.128 --> 00:37:23.715
You said two of them had gone into being cabins.

00:37:24.465 --> 00:37:26.875
Yeah, they all had after trolley life.

00:37:26.875 --> 00:37:30.367
So all of the trolleys most of them, were made primarily out of wood.

00:37:30.367 --> 00:37:35.916
It didn't make sense to burn them like they did out in California with the piles of trolleys.

00:37:35.916 --> 00:37:41.092
You'll find photos of where they would just stack them and catch them on fire and then scrap the metal.

00:37:41.092 --> 00:37:42.856
There wasn't enough metal for it.

00:37:42.856 --> 00:37:51.510
I'm glad they didn't do that, yeah, so a lot of them were sold, became some of the earliest mobile homes because you could buy the trolley for really cheap.

00:37:51.510 --> 00:37:52.652
It came without the wheels.

00:37:52.652 --> 00:37:59.856
Sometimes they'd take the electric equipment out so that they could use them for parts because they kept running freight for a few years after that.

00:37:59.856 --> 00:38:06.275
But you'd have a pre-made structure with windows, set it down on a foundation, put your furniture in.

00:38:06.275 --> 00:38:07.038
You got a cheap home.

00:38:07.664 --> 00:38:14.199
The one number five, which was built in 1920 out of scrap parts, was called the Express Motor.

00:38:14.199 --> 00:38:24.657
It was basically a freight unit that was a self-propelled railroad box car so you could load it with goods and it had controls in both ends to run itself and it could pull up to eight freight cars.

00:38:24.657 --> 00:38:37.396
That became a garden shed and then ended up going to a museum in the 1960s in Pennsylvania and they gave it to the Hagerstown and Frederick Railway Historical Society in the early 2000s.

00:38:37.396 --> 00:38:45.335
We had just started our organization at that point so we couldn't afford to keep it, so we donated it to the town of Thurmont and they have taken great care of it.

00:38:45.335 --> 00:38:50.489
It's got its own little park and they've been working on making a segment of the trolley line through their town into a trail.

00:38:50.871 --> 00:39:00.608
Right alongside it, car 150, that was bought secondhand.

00:39:00.608 --> 00:39:01.251
It was a cabin near Frederick.

00:39:01.251 --> 00:39:02.072
It might have been part of a restaurant.

00:39:02.072 --> 00:39:05.746
There were four trolleys similar of an identical design that came secondhand at the same time.

00:39:05.746 --> 00:39:15.192
We know at least three of them were used as a restaurant in Frederick for a while Not sure if this was one of them and got moved to be a cabin or just went straight to being a cabin.

00:39:15.192 --> 00:39:38.398
It was saved in the early 1990s by a gentleman named Don Easterday who moved it, took the cabin down that had been built around it, moved it to Myersville and for 1994 until 2012, when his property hosted the annual Myersville Trolley Festival, which got a lot more people interested in the trolley history and helped the trolley survive.

00:39:38.398 --> 00:39:39.971
He kept doing work on it.

00:39:39.971 --> 00:39:49.175
When he passed away in 2016, unfortunately, his family sold the trolley to the town, who worked with the county to put it inside of the town's new library.

00:39:49.485 --> 00:39:53.255
So you can now go and sit inside of an original Hagerstown and Frederick trolley and read a book.

00:39:53.255 --> 00:40:00.559
The other two there is car 168, which was the first steel-sided trolley they ever bought.

00:40:00.559 --> 00:40:03.974
It was also the first of the signature design.

00:40:03.974 --> 00:40:11.733
Basically, if anybody sees pictures of the Hagerstown and Frederick usually they're going to think of this one style of trolley that was really kind of unique to the line.

00:40:11.733 --> 00:40:14.918
Only a couple other trolley companies in the whole country used them.

00:40:14.918 --> 00:40:16.199
So it's the original.

00:40:16.199 --> 00:40:19.271
It is at the Hagerstown Roundhouse Museum, oh yep.

00:40:19.271 --> 00:40:24.929
And then the last trolley, 171, which was one of those last two to Traveling Frederick.

00:40:24.929 --> 00:40:32.474
That one was saved as a cabin and is still a cabin, and I'm not going to say where because I respect the owner's privacy.

00:40:32.474 --> 00:40:45.117
And for a while it was thought that might've been 172, the last trolley, but the design, the number of windows and the actual fact you could still see some of the number matches 171.

00:40:46.206 --> 00:40:49.876
So if someone were to want to become a trolley conductor back in the day, how would they go about learning that?

00:40:49.876 --> 00:40:54.472
To become a trolley conductor back in the day, how would they go about learning that?

00:40:55.565 --> 00:41:00.632
Well it's actually not that difficult and there are a number of museums that you can actually volunteer and learn to do that today.

00:41:00.632 --> 00:41:04.153
Oh wow, they're always seeking volunteers for that.

00:41:04.153 --> 00:41:10.248
But first you'd have to have an in with the company you could apply.

00:41:10.248 --> 00:41:12.791
Usually they'd need some good references.

00:41:12.791 --> 00:41:17.132
You could start at a fairly young age.

00:41:17.132 --> 00:41:19.280
I'm not sure what the youngest would have been.

00:41:19.280 --> 00:41:29.215
Usually you'd start working in the shops or a handyman or something small, unless you had a really good reference.

00:41:29.215 --> 00:41:32.418
But you could.

00:41:32.418 --> 00:41:36.983
You'd train as a trainee.

00:41:36.983 --> 00:41:38.931
Basically they had a special little badge.

00:41:38.931 --> 00:41:43.297
I've only seen one of them surviving in a private collection of a student driver.

00:41:43.297 --> 00:41:50.693
But they're really easy to operate, surprisingly, because there are only three main controls.

00:41:50.693 --> 00:41:53.202
You've got switches and fuses and lights.

00:41:53.545 --> 00:41:55.070
It's not like being a flight pilot today.

00:41:55.070 --> 00:41:56.155
It's not like being a pilot.

00:41:56.887 --> 00:42:00.650
You have a reverser which basically chooses if you're going forward or backwards.

00:42:00.650 --> 00:42:07.773
You have an air brake, maybe a manual or a manual brake, maybe an air brake, depending on the trolley.

00:42:07.773 --> 00:42:19.056
The manual brake, when some of them, is the only way to control stopping, but a lot of them have an air brake, where that's what's controlling your speed rather than a throttle.

00:42:19.056 --> 00:42:24.034
And then you have the throttle, which just kind of clicks into different notches.

00:42:24.034 --> 00:42:36.034
So to drive a trolley, all you need to learn how to do is judge your own speed, provide the power with the throttle and then shut it off, let it glide and control the speed with the brake.

00:42:36.335 --> 00:42:43.679
Okay, because the controller just takes and is like an adjustable switch for like a dimmer.

00:42:43.679 --> 00:43:05.681
There are different sets of power that go to different numbers of motors and resistor banks on the bottom of the trolley, a lot of technical electrical equipment to reduce the amount of power going to the motors, and so you're just giving power, kind of like you see with modern electric cars you give it power, it goes.

00:43:05.681 --> 00:43:08.753
So you don't need to constantly be giving it power.

00:43:08.753 --> 00:43:17.391
You just give it enough power to get going, let it glide for a while and then give it a little, rather than driving a car where you're constantly putting your foot on the pedal.

00:43:18.347 --> 00:43:19.831
Would you have needed a book like this?

00:43:20.527 --> 00:43:25.516
No, the book that I have here actually belonged to a gentleman named Thomas Holler.

00:43:25.516 --> 00:43:32.096
He was one of the founders of the Frederick and Middletown Railway and this book was part of his private library.

00:43:32.096 --> 00:43:33.097
It's got his stamp in it.

00:43:33.097 --> 00:43:41.010
It came to us just a couple of years ago from the collection of a gentleman named Carol James, who I'll give a little more detail on him in a moment.

00:43:41.010 --> 00:43:42.815
But the book was.

00:43:42.815 --> 00:43:49.992
It's a manual from 1893 on the technical aspects of starting a trolley line.

00:43:50.413 --> 00:43:50.934
Oh, wow.

00:43:51.295 --> 00:44:02.615
So this little book is a reference guide that would have been used while they were building the Frederick Trolley System, so it's really the manual that he at least would have used.

00:44:02.615 --> 00:44:09.293
I'm sure some of the other gentlemen may have had copies of the same book, and Thomas Haller his name pops up from time to time.

00:44:09.293 --> 00:44:10.476
He was one of the founders.

00:44:10.476 --> 00:44:26.318
He was involved into the 1920s so at least 30 years and spent a lot of that time as the company treasurer, I believe, and so it's fascinating to have this book that shows how to start a trolley line.

00:44:26.318 --> 00:44:33.507
That belonged to one of the guys that started the trolley line, and hopefully we'll be able to get it scanned here soon so that you can actually read through it.

00:44:33.507 --> 00:44:35.052
It's a little bit delicate now.

00:44:35.373 --> 00:44:36.456
I can imagine how old is it.

00:44:36.456 --> 00:44:37.447
When was it written?

00:44:37.467 --> 00:44:40.414
1893, which was when they started fundraising.

00:44:40.414 --> 00:44:48.925
To put things into perspective again, frank Sprague's first successful passenger trolley service in Richmond, virginia, was 1888.

00:44:48.925 --> 00:44:54.215
So this is the first five years of practical trolleys.

00:44:54.215 --> 00:45:03.856
This book was written for the hundreds of startup trolley companies, and a lot of the trolley companies were already failing because you needed a lot of money, a lot of investment.

00:45:03.856 --> 00:45:07.748
So the fact that the little company here survived is significant.

00:45:07.748 --> 00:45:09.393
There was nearby Martinsburg.

00:45:09.393 --> 00:45:18.115
West Virginia had a trolley system that started in the early 1890s and by the time 1896 rolled around they had already gone out of business.

00:45:18.115 --> 00:45:23.858
So three of their trolley cars actually became the first three to serve in Hagerstown secondhand.

00:45:24.385 --> 00:45:31.998
So hopefully this piece will you know relatively as soon as funding will allow, be able to be part of your archive that people can access.

00:45:31.998 --> 00:45:38.297
Yes, but we also do have another artifact that you can see if you do come to the museum.

00:45:38.597 --> 00:45:39.746
Yes, so we have.

00:45:39.746 --> 00:45:48.375
I like to refer to it as the big piece in reference to the big piece of the Titanic that was brought up that people think about if you think of Titanic exhibits.

00:45:48.375 --> 00:45:55.048
The gentleman named Carol James we also got the book from his collection was a radio DJ.

00:45:55.048 --> 00:45:58.818
He was born in Frederick, grew up in Hagerstown right along the trolley line.

00:45:58.818 --> 00:46:06.952
His father worked for the trolley company that had become the power company by then, potomac Edison, and he was just fascinated by the trolleys.

00:46:06.952 --> 00:46:10.768
But he grew up and got interested in radio a little bit more.

00:46:10.768 --> 00:46:15.469
So instead of following his father's footsteps, he started working for the local radio station.

00:46:15.469 --> 00:46:29.733
He was able to provide a broadcast for the Hagerstown radio station WJEJ, from aboard the last trolley between Frederick and Thurmont, which is one of the QR codes in our museum exhibit.

00:46:29.733 --> 00:46:35.188
You can actually listen to that full 18-minute broadcast that he put out the next day.

00:46:35.809 --> 00:47:04.469
But he kept his love of trolleys and, as he grew more famous, 10 years after the broadcast from the last trolley he had gotten a job as a DJ in Washington DC where he threw a connection with a flight attendant, managed to get a hold of an English copy of a record from a band that nobody had heard of or to get a hold of an English copy of a record from a band that nobody had heard of or was starting to hear of, known as the Beatles, and played one of their songs on his radio broadcast a little bit before the Sullivan show release.

00:47:04.469 --> 00:47:09.461
So originally the Beatles studio was very angry with him.

00:47:09.461 --> 00:47:12.108
People weren't supposed to hear the Beatles yet.

00:47:12.108 --> 00:47:18.592
It wasosed to be this big Ed Sullivan release and suddenly the DC area had heard them and so he was going to get in trouble for it.

00:47:18.592 --> 00:47:25.733
And then they realized his broadcast had actually made the Beatles suddenly popular and it helped grow the local interest.

00:47:25.733 --> 00:47:38.811
So instead of getting in trouble, when the Fab Four came and started their American tour after the Sullivan show, he got to be the first radio DJ to interview them live on the air in the United States right before their concert in DC.

00:47:39.304 --> 00:47:41.793
But all this time he was collecting trolley things still.

00:47:41.793 --> 00:47:46.668
So he was still interested in the Hagerstown and Frederick Living in Silver Springs.

00:47:46.668 --> 00:47:57.914
He was also interested in the DC and the Baltimore trolleys, got this collection together and in his later years after he retired, he started putting together local broadcast documentaries.

00:47:57.914 --> 00:48:05.938
He had a slideshow that you could buy a copy of the slideshow and have it shipped to you anywhere in the country and you could show it to your railroad club with his narration.

00:48:05.938 --> 00:48:10.155
Eventually he turned that into a documentary in 1994, made it commercially available and unfortunately passed away three years later.

00:48:10.155 --> 00:48:11.259
But it's the only documentary about the trolley system.

00:48:11.259 --> 00:48:22.456
Made it commercially available and unfortunately passed away three years later, but it's the only documentary about the trolley system and it introduced a whole new generation to the history of the trolley in conjunction with the Trolley Festival that started that same year.

00:48:22.985 --> 00:48:31.132
So he and Donald Easterday, I feel, are significantly responsible for the reason so many people still know about the trolley line.

00:48:31.132 --> 00:49:17.094
So after he passed away, not much was known about what happened to his collection and so a couple of years ago found an item on eBay that just looked a little interesting, contacted the seller, found out that it was from his collection and his widow, who had remarried since, wasn't sure what to do with other items, and so we ended up buying that item, or one of our supporters bought the item and donated it to us and a lot of the other things from his collection she donated to us directly and they make up a number of the items in the museum now, as well as quite a number of items in the archives, including the book, and among them were some items from Trolley 172, which he even says in the documentary was his favorite trolley.

00:49:17.094 --> 00:49:24.911
We have an original bell and an original whistle on display, but the big piece is the largest surviving piece and that is one of the original doors.

00:49:24.911 --> 00:49:31.164
We have it displayed so that we can demonstrate its accordion-like opening and closing function.

00:49:31.164 --> 00:49:36.518
I love the fact that we have it and the book because they're kind of bookend pieces.

00:49:36.518 --> 00:49:43.018
The book talks about the start of the trolley line, but the door is the end.

00:49:43.125 --> 00:49:49.998
This was the door that so many passengers climbed aboard the trolley and then climbed off through on the last trip.

00:49:49.998 --> 00:49:52.820
It was the last trolley that they bought new.

00:49:52.820 --> 00:49:59.998
It was the most powerful trolley they had ever operated and it just was something people use day in and day out.

00:49:59.998 --> 00:50:06.085
It's got a brass handle that was used as kind of the stair rail and you can see just how polished it is.

00:50:06.085 --> 00:50:07.027
We haven't polished it.

00:50:07.027 --> 00:50:15.449
That's from all the people using it year after year to climb up the steps onto the trolley and you can see that or you can demonstrate it.

00:50:15.449 --> 00:50:18.856
Let kids pull on the handle to see how it latches.

00:50:18.856 --> 00:50:26.947
It's just a piece of the trolley that you see in so many photos and has such a significant part on several of the lines.

00:50:27.268 --> 00:50:40.009
Well, it's perfect because you have kind of the initial, the beginning and then the end, yeah, the bookend, and if you would like to see the kind of the initial, the beginning and then the end yeah, the bookend items, and if you would like to see the rest of the story in the middle, then you should definitely come to the museum.

00:50:40.009 --> 00:50:40.811
Absolutely.

00:50:40.811 --> 00:50:46.105
There are quite a number of exhibits, a lot of photos, dioramas, maps, a number of artifacts.

00:50:46.125 --> 00:50:47.668
While you're in there, you can actually hear.

00:50:48.311 --> 00:50:53.744
You can hear audio recordings of the trolleys as they were operating in the 1950s.

00:50:53.744 --> 00:51:03.556
There was a gentleman from Wisconsin that came and spent some time recording several of the trolleys, and so we have those records playing in the background.

00:51:03.556 --> 00:51:12.797
I'm actually going to be working on an edit of it where it's not the original clips because it has some horns that were added later after Boonesboro service.

00:51:12.797 --> 00:51:21.659
So you'll have the original recordings, but it will be put together in such a way that it's as if you were listening to the trolleys as they're coming and going outside.

00:51:21.659 --> 00:51:24.333
So for now we're just playing the records as is.

00:51:24.333 --> 00:51:26.251
Eventually that will change a little bit.

00:51:26.806 --> 00:51:28.371
But, it'll still be the original sounds.

00:51:28.632 --> 00:51:29.434
Well, it's very exciting.

00:51:29.505 --> 00:51:38.913
You guys have a lot of good things and if you come visit this one, in the very, very near future, right next door is going to be the National Road Museum, which I'm involved with that as well.

00:51:38.913 --> 00:51:59.275
So it's exciting that two stories really mesh together and it's exciting to have two museums that have such an interesting and important impact on transportation, both locally and telling the story of similar companies and roads and railroads throughout the country, all as kind of a cross-section here in the middle of Maryland.

00:51:59.815 --> 00:52:00.657
Middle of Boonesboro.

00:52:00.898 --> 00:52:01.539
Middle of Boonesboro.

00:52:02.045 --> 00:52:05.856
Well, thank you so much for sharing with us all the information about trolleys.

00:52:05.856 --> 00:52:06.496
Who knew I didn't?

00:52:07.346 --> 00:52:16.556
Yeah, there is so much more in transportation history than people realize and it impacted life for so many people more than anyone can imagine.

00:52:16.556 --> 00:52:23.293
We take transportation for granted now, but it is a drastic part of our development.

00:52:23.974 --> 00:52:24.335
As a culture.

00:52:24.335 --> 00:52:25.898
Economic growth yes, and as a culture.

00:52:25.898 --> 00:52:27.900
Yeah Well, thank you so much Thank you.

00:52:30.786 --> 00:52:35.737
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00:52:35.737 --> 00:52:44.619
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00:52:44.619 --> 00:52:53.719
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00:52:53.719 --> 00:52:56.791
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