Getting Around Town 235 Tracks–A System First Put Into Operation In

Chapter 8: Getting Around Town tracks–a system first put into operation in San Francisco in 1872. The line ran south from Druid Hill Park to Fayette Street, through the downtown area on Fayette, and eastward to Patterson Park. The newspapers followed the project closely, and the public eagerly anticipated its opening on May 21, 1891. The new cars, weighing 17,000 pounds, looked gigantic next to little horsecars that weighed only 5,000 pounds. When fully loaded with “strap hangers” and those seated, the new cable cars could carry nearly a hundred passengers at a speed of ten miles per hour, the limit set for them by the City Council. (The very first car exceeded this speed on its maiden run.) On opening day, 60,000 people rode the new cars.232 Baltimoreans were thrilled with the innovation and clamored for rapid transit on all the lines. For a year or two the city council required that lines running through the downtown be powered by cable rather than electricity because many of those who went downtown to work or shop feared walking beneath the overhead electric wires, and a number of downtown merchants thought the wires and posts were unsightly and impeded the sidewalks.233 Five of the old lines, including the Red Line (the first omnibus line to be converted to horsecars back in 1859) were converted to cable power. When the Red Line switched, the first cable car carried among its passengers Mrs. Robert H. Gilbert, a woman who had ridden on the first Red Line horsecar in October, 1859.234 The suburban routes all converted directly to electricity because they were far too long for cable power. Flying along at ten miles an hour or more, they halved the time it took to go into the city from places such as Towson, Pikesville, and Catonsville. In 1892 the horsecar line through South Baltimore was electrified and extended across the Long Bridge at Ferry Bar into Anne Arundel County; a year later the first electric trolley cars whisked into Towson. The arrival of rapid transit in the county seat “caused a considerable stir among the residents and crowds watched the cars arrive and depart.” Over 3,000 people rode the line during its first day of operation.235 Soon passengers could board an electric car in Catonsville, change to a York Road car downtown, and travel to Towson, a distance of seventeen miles, at a cost of only twenty cents. The same trip by horsecar had cost forty-five cents. Resistance to the running of electric lines through the downtown was overcome by the example of the suburban lines and by the fall of 1892 electric cars began to move through the city’s main commercial streets, bringing faster service to city residents. The Central Line, running from Fulton Avenue through the city center to Fells Point, converted to electricity in September 1891 and made the trip in thirty-five minutes compared to the hour and six minutes that the old horsecars took. Those who rode the line on opening day arrived at the horsecar barn and were greeted by a large sign reading “Horses For Sale.236 By the spring of 1894, nineteen of the city’s twenty-three horsecar lines had been converted to cable or electric power and plans to convert the remaining lines had been announced. Thus, only thirty-five years after the first horsecar line opened, and been hailed as a great advance for Baltimore, The American noted that “the last vestige of the antiquated system of horse power on street railways is fast disappearing.”237 The last major horsecar line disappeared in 1896. By the end of the decade improvements in the electric trolley cars made them clearly 235 .

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