Welcome to the first diary for a new dKos group, The Streetcar Barn. We have a lot of good discussion here about trains and high-speed rail, but i feelt we could use a place to talk about urban public transit. Since streetcars are a passion of mine, I'll be focusing a lot on their history as well as their future.
In this photo, a "bobtail" car from the Johnson Car Works of St. Louis, MO, on the Prytania line. No specific date for this photo, but the bobtails ran uptown for the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad Company in the 1870s through the late 1890s, when the streetcar lines were electrified.
The bobtails were an almost ubiquitous site in New Orleans in the 1880s and 1890s. They were wide, offering passengers a stable ride, and were short enough to be easily turned around on turntables (like the ones used to turn around cable cars in San Francisco). The Prytania line was a short-run, "neighborhood" line designed to connect Faubourg Bouligny and the Garden District to downtown.
This photo was is a bit damaged, so I didn't use it in my article on pre-electric streetcars for GoNOLA.com, but it's still a cool shot.
I cordially invite you to join me in The Streetcar Barn to discuss streetcars, buses, subways, and other urban transit issues. Come on over!