Age of the Trolley Cars
They outlie early, stayed late, and made a
big impression in 14'ortli Carolina.
By .MICHAEL J. IIL W HI
One of the landmarks of a city
childhood in North Carolina not too
many years ago was riding the trolley.
Yet that institution has vanished so
thoroughly from the Tar Heel scene
that a person would have to be almost
a generation old. or more, to recall
the details of waiting for the trolley
and boarding it. Like the singing of
the wire overhead as the car ap¬
proached. and at night the wavy
course of the dim yellow headlight as
the car rocked ark-like towards the
waiting riders. The sigh as the car
stopped and door opened; the pinging-
panting of an airpump hidden some¬
where beneath the floor. The long
rows of yellow cane scats and the
white hanging porcelain straps for
standees to grab. And the smell of
ozone as current crackled into the old
motors and the car creaked into mo¬
tion.
Most Main Streets in North Carolina
had their trolleys, and to this state the
trolley car came early and stayed late.
As early as 18X9 a progressive Ashe¬
ville could boast the first electrified
street railway system south of Rich¬
mond; and the final electric trolley
wire in the state, over a bit of elec¬
trified freight trackage along Char¬
lotte's Mint Street, didn't come down
till almost 70 years later. During the
intervening years the clatter of street¬
cars echoed along the streets of
Asheville. Burlington. Charlotte. Con¬
cord. Durham. Gastonia, Goldsboro.
Greensboro. High Point, New Bern.
Raleigh. Salisbury and Spencer. Wil¬
mington and Winston-Salem. In addi¬
tion. intcrurbans or rural trolley lines
brought the wonders of electric rail¬
roading to such smaller communities
as Wcavcrville. Wrightsvillc Beach.
Haw River, Pinchurst, Mount Holly
and Belmont.
‘•Electric Parks"
To please riders many streetcar
companies had two sets of cars, closed
cars for winter and breezy open ones
for summer. Goldsboro's traction com¬
pany thus had nine cars in 1915 for a
system only 4.8 miles long, for ex¬
ample. Many companies developed
outlying “electric parks” — amuse¬
ment parks, picnic groves or similar
attractions to draw riders to the cars.
Witness the Wrightsvillc Beach inter-
urban's famous Lumina pavilion; the
Charlotte street railway's Lakewood
park, complete even to a small lake
for sailboating; and other typical parks
developed at Goldsboro and at New
Bern by those cities' trolley firms.
Many companies that operated elec¬
tric railways also provided other
utility services, notably electric power,
but also sometimes ice or water or gas,
and though the streetcars are gone, the
firms themselves are often perpetuated
in the big utilities that absorbed or
succeeded them, familiar firms like
Carolina Power and Light, or Duke
Power.
Of the streetcar systems, the largest
and longest-lived were generally the
big-city networks.
“ I hc Streetcar Fra"
The Raleigh street railway system
provided the nucleus for today's Caro¬
lina Power and Light Co. It opened
with horse-cars by 1886. had its ups
and downs to 1908, and was one of
three firms united as Carolina Power
and Light Co. Its mileage reached 14
before buses replaced streetcars in
March. 1933.
In and around Wilmington a whole
cadre of smaller lines, one a steam
beach dummy line dating back to
1888, came to make up the eventual
Tide Water Power Co. network. The
city streetcar era ran from 1891-92 to
1939. An intcrurban railway from
Wilmington to Wrightsvillc Beach was
completed in 1902 and its Lumina
dance pavilion was finished by 1907.
For years the intcrurban carried not
only local passengers but through
transfer passengers off the steam roads
at Wilmington, and lugged heavy
steam road Pullman cars and even a
little freight to the beach. Motorcar
and bus competition killed it off.
though, in April, 1940.
Horsccars
Asheville too had horsccars at first
(only Hendersonville, of the state's
major cities, had horsccars but no later
electric cars). Trolleys replaced these
in 1889. A confusing array of early
THE STATE. July 1. 1969