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 […]
Prologue So… first review outside the northeast! 🥳 Anyway, as part of our tour of first-gen systems in North America, we will turn to Cleveland next. Frankly, Cleveland has a fairly unusual system in that it does not derive from the city’s streetcar system, but rather from a unique semi-interurban operation. Overview At 29 kilometers, […]
Prologue The Newark City Subway… do you mean the New York City Subway? Well, no, and it’s not a tram, so why would I be reviewing it? Anyway, when listing the “famous 9” systems in North America, you always forget about either Pittsburgh, Cleveland, or Newark. And it’s a bit hard to imagine Newark, an […]
Prologue The previous post was about Boston’s quirky little isolated light rail line, the Mattapan Line, so naturally the next post will cover the real light rail system of Boston, the Green Line. The Green Line has the highest ridership per mile of any light rail system in the country, and was also the first […]
Prologue Why on earth did you choose a quirky line in southern Boston as your first review!? Well, I don’t know actually, maybe because I’m currently in Boston… Maybe because I like PCCs… But from a practical standpoint it’s a short line that can be quickly described and serves as a template for myself, and […]
