Fort Worth Streetcar History

[FoUTASportscaster]

I bought a butt-load of maps from the library for my research. One was a 1907 map of Fort Worth. I copied the streetcar lines on a map of today's Fort Worth on Google.

http://www.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=111053706958580298750.000449d705c9219825d34&z=13

[RobertB]

Very cool. It looks like there used to be another bridge over the Trinity, west of the current Main Street bridge? It would be cool to see pictures, if any exist.

[Ranger1987]

I agree, very cool project. You may want to check in Crowley and Burleson for info further south. They have exhibits in old town Burleson about the streetcars to Fort Worth.

http://texastraveler.smugmug.com/gallery/2507858_JdcRq#146656027

[Haretip]

Ranger1987, only interurbans travelled between Burleson and Fort Worth. A streetcar would take too long.

Robert, there was a second crossing (and possibly a third) west of main street. There is discussion at this website: http://home.flash.net/~cymartin/rosenhts.html and also a more thorough discussion here: http://www.fortwortharchitecture.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=158

Also, there is a picture in today's Star Telegram of a streetcar that ran Fort Worth and Dallas.

Can anyone GUESS the location of the car shown operating in Dallas alongside a newer PCC car? (Intersection of what street and what cross street.)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3145/2651489439_451c446e09.jpg

There was a thread about the new building located where the multi-story house was just above the PCC car.

Here's one of the articles. (http://fortworthology.com/2008/07/09/a-vintage-fort-worth-streetcar-comes-home/)

[FoUTASportscaster]

My guess is somewhere in Oak Cliff. Possibly Jefferson and Tyler, Jefferson and Marlborough or Jefferson and Zang.

[warlock55]

There's a BIG hint in the picture on the right-hand side. :D

[FoUTASportscaster]

Yeah, I have been trying to figure out if that is the old episcopal college in East Dallas or the womans college in Oak Cliff.

[Haretip]

Hmmm... How long to let this go on?

OK. Here's a hint. This is either on the Oak Lawn or the Highland Park streetcar line.

[Haretip]

It's the intersection of COLE and Bowen in Uptown looking east/southeast. The house above the PCC car is on the corner of McKinney and Bowen and is the location of the Sugar Film Production building.

[dfwcre8tive]

http://www.star-telegram.com/news/columnists/bud_kennedy//index.html

Posted on Wed, Jul. 09, 2008
A relic of Fort Worth's mass-transit past
BUD KENNEDY
bud@star-telegram.com

Finally, light rail has returned to downtown Fort Worth. Sort of.

Unfortunately, all we have is one 80-year-old trolley car that won’t be rolling anywhere soon.

While Dallas commuters are packing light-rail train lines, Fort Worth and Arlington workers are mostly still driving. But we do have an antique trolley car with only one destination: a back yard in the Trinity Bluff neighborhood along Samuels Avenue.

Rail hobbyists from North Texas Historic Transportation rescued the vintage 1928 car last month from the Central Texas town of Laguna Park, where it came to rest 50 years after its last run on a Dallas trolley line.

Andy Nold of Fort Worth didn’t have anywhere else to park the keepsake.

So it’s in his back yard.

"We had a really good mass-transit system in Fort Worth back in the 1920s, and this little trolley car was cutting-edge," said Nold, 36, a land surveyor and a vice president of North Texas Historic Transportation. That Fort Worth-based organization locates and restores early-20th-century trolleys and streetcars.

The trolley originally ran on Fort Worth lines including the South Summit Heights route, then was sold to Dallas and ran on the Cole Avenue line that is now part of the McKinney Avenue trolley.

"This is a pretty special car to bring back home," Nold said.

A couple of his neighbors have asked about the future of the old trolley, officially still named by its last owner as Car No. 123, Dallas Railway & Terminal Co.

Nold said he will fence the rail car and conceal it to meet city codes until the historic group can find it another home.

The trolley — Texans never called them streetcars — still has wood interior paneling, but the leather bucket seats and ornate art deco light fixtures have been removed.

When it was built for the then-privately-owned Fort Worth line in 1928, Car No. 123 was a flashy new model of the familiar Birney Safety Car trolley, the first equipped with two power poles instead of one and with four axles for a smoother ride.

At the time, trolleys were struggling to win customers back from the new Ford Model A.

Car No. 123 was "the last effort to fight the influence of the automobile," Nold said. "It had art deco. It had leather. It was supposed to be a luxurious ride that would be better than any automobile."

Fort Worth’s showcase trolley line, the Crimson Limited to Dallas, made its last run in 1934, ending that commuter connection until the full-size Trinity Railway Express began in 2000.

In 1935, Car No. 123 was sold to Dallas for runs to the Texas Centennial exposition at Fair Park. Dallas still ran 25 trolleys in the 1950s before selling the last cars.

Car No. 123 wound up at Whitney Lake dam.

"Somebody needed a cheap fishing cabin or lake cottage," Nold said.

A house was eventually built around the streetcar. When the house was ticketed for demolition recently, the owner offered the trolley to historic groups.

Similar trolleys now serve as farm sheds and fishing cabins at Whitney Lake and also in the Ellis County town of Red Oak, he said.

"Of the four known cars that still exist, this is the best I’ve seen," he said.

And it’s back home.

[FoUTASportscaster]

The trolley — Texans never called them streetcars

That's a lie. It actually reverse. Texans called them streetcars when many other places called them other names. I've got stacks and stacks of old press clippings to back me up.

On another note, congrats Andy on saving a piece of FW's history. Can you talk about the plans for it?

[Haretip]

The author sent me an email of correction that streetcar is correct. He did some research and ackowledged he was wrong.

I will post more when I get back from Las Vegas and am not paying for internet access.

[Haretip]

Hi all,

OK, I went back and checked the newspaper clippings.

I think I made a mistake, and it reflects the inherent weakness in relying on news clippings.

Most of the Dallas News headlines referred to "trolleys."

But when I went back and checked, the stories usually read "streetcars."

I bet the headline writers preferred "trolleys" because it was a shorter word. In the same way, newspapers often used shorter spellings such as "cigaret," and some even had a policy of using the shortest possible word to save linotype lead.

Obviously, "streetcars" is the preferred word. I apologize for the confusion, and please share this with your fellow streetcar hobbyists.

--Bud


Fouta, no immediate plans, but the car is very restoreable. We are concentrating on the restoration of our single-trucked Birney first. Hopefully we will be able to offer the cars for use on the proposed Fort Worth streetcar circulator, but until that is built I wouldn't mind seeing it run in Dallas on the MATA line. We'll see what happens. There was another similar car (125) near Red Oak that had been hit by lightening and is soon to be bulldozed. The owner donated the parts off of that car which we will use on 123.