Prior to introducing our subject today, let me first inform you that this draft had been incubating for an unacceptably long time. While working on this post during several different periods of time spanning a long period of time, I’ve felt many different feelings, from excitement, to curiosity, to dread, to indifference, but none of […]
Welcome back… I guess. Neither of us were really able to write for a while, and nor were we inspired. For now, here’s a report on the Shoreline Trolley Museum in East Haven Connecticut, which I visited on July 16th of this year. I am aware that there’s not much of “this year” left, and […]
Prologue Well, here we are back in Philadelphia, now for the final time. To finish out Philadelphia and in fact the Northeast in general (of the “first gen systems”), here’s the Septa Subway-Surface lines, in which we’re including the 15 – Girard Avenue line. This is a huge and rather disorganized system, so get ready […]
Prologue Recently I was passing by the New York Museum of Transportation, and since our current policy on museums is “only if you visited”, because they’re often poorly documented online (which is not the case here), it was barely a question that I should make a visit. Unfortunately, my visit was fairly short. I needed […]
Prologue The South Shore Line is a electric railroad that runs a single service from Downtown Chicago through northwest Indiana, serving highly industrialized areas, and eventually cornfields and sand dunes, as it approaches its terminus in South Bend. Its unique characteristics often give it the nickname “America’s Last Interurban” among railfans. Overview The system is […]
Prologue Our next stop brings us back to Philadelphia and the Norristown High Speed Line, one of the most unique lines that qualify to be written about on this blog, which mixes multiple modes together in a special way and was one of the highest quality interurbans of the 1900s. The line still exists today, […]
Prologue Sorry for not getting to this earlier, this is hopefully going to be a quick review of two of Pittsburgh‘s (relatively) unique elements of transport: Overview I’d like to share this inspiring, emotional quotation that will tell you everything: “It’s Pittsburgh[,] [e]verything is blocked by a hill[.]” – Daria Phoebe So… as you can […]
Prologue Pittsburgh’s light rail may look like a classic 80’s system from afar, especially with its core subway and extensive utilization of railroad right of way, but it is in fact a transformed first gen system, and contains a rich and varied history. With lots of bridges and tunnels, light rail vehicles faithfully serve the […]
Prologue Philadelphia, the city of American freedom and independence, tourists randomly being attracted to a broken bell (the city hall is arguably cooler), the city that embarrassingly gets left out when listing major northeast US cities when it is probably bigger than Boston, has a robust transportation network famous for trackless trolleys trolleybuses, and its […]
Prologue Why? What’s wrong with you? Why are you reviewing a cable car?!?!? In the “mission statement”, I said that I’ll review everything that’s mechanically or linguistically a tram, and yes, that includes aerial trams, as those are trams for some reason. So, the next time you build a cable car (or any kind of […]
