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Images of America All Aboard History of Mass Transportation in Rhode Island
Images of America ALL ABOARD THE HISTORY OF MASS TRANSPORTATION IN RHODE ISLAND
BY SCOTT MOLLOY PH. D.
127 PAGES SOFTCOVER
Contents
Introduction
1.Horses and Cables
2.The Trolley
3.All Aboard
4.UER Streetcars
5.Buses
6.Trackless Trolleys
7.Transit Workers
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I worked for the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority as a bus operator from 1973 until 1981, when I became the Amalgamated Transit Union's full-time business agent. I was a third-generation transit worker; my Irish grandfather and two of his sons toiled there before me. For most of the 20th century there was a Molloy on the property in some capacity.
I spent more than a decade at the Elmwood Avenue garage, the same place all my relatives had worked, and felt haunted by the ghosts of transit past. I probably retraced their streetcar tracks, trackless trolley lines, and diesel bus routes a thousand times in my own updated GMC coach. I also had a college degree in American history, which did not make me a better bus driver or union colleague, but certainly gave me a wider perspective about life in the slow lane.
I also happened to like people in general, and being a transit operator, you meet all kinds as always has been the case in the industry. For the most part, driving a bus was fun as long as you had the personality for it. And did we ever have personalities! Many of my co-workers were real characters off and on the bus. Like myself, they were often second- and third-generation transit employees. (One driver, Bill Souza, was actually fourth generation!) Our passengers, for the most part, were typical Rhode Islanders and could remember our relatives as well as we could and sometimes had better stories to tell about their careers.
With so many human connections to yesterday's journeys, I was always amazed at the jungle of conflicting stories, dates, and events concerning our legacy. Over the years I've made an academic career tracing and analyzing the tale of transportation in Rhode Island and especially the people who operated and boarded transit vehicles. I have written scholarly books, popular pamphlets, and even an earlier pictorial history. I3ut I have never put together so many images in one place. I have tried to display an array of vehicles, not isolated from employees and patrons, but interacting with one another. Unfortunately, early photographers had trouble capturing moving vehicles, horse teams, and bustling passengers on film. Posed pictures, devoid of people, often are standard fare in this field. Rail fans, who took many of the modern photographs, often quarantined the vehicles from crews and patrons alike as if the human presence would contaminate the machine.
One way to recapture the transit past is to visit several of the trolley museums in the New England area-in Connecticut and Maine. Like prehistoric beasts, these once ubiquitous vehicles have been isolated from their original environment. Herded together in shops and barns, the old streetcars stand in various states of disrepair, creating a sense of sadness about a lost era. Even the restored streetcars whiz along a truncated track. However, my children are glad 'to have any sort of ride and always place the obligatory penny on the rails after riding. The trolley flattens poor President Lincoln to the size of a quarter, to the kids delight.
Trolleys added cohesion to communities as neighbors and passengers walked to and from streetcar and bus stops, sharing a friendly greeting or just keeping an eye on the block where they lived. The withering of mass transit helped usher in today's anonymous society as the boundaries of home life reached the driveway or garage but not much further. The demise of mass transit, done incrementally and almost imperceptibly, lessened our lives in the community, at least to those who had a glimpse of what came before.
Most of the images in this book are from my own collection and therefore are not identified otherwise. My gratitude to the collectors and photographers who, over the years, made this all possible.
All Aboard: The History of Mass Transportation in Rhode Island
All Aboard: The History of Mass Transportation in Rhode Island covers the period from the Civil War to the creation of the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA). Each of the seven chapters examines a particular form of travel and its impact on the people and surrounding area. From the horse-drawn omnibus, horse car, and cable tramway to the rumbling buses of modern times, this book welcomes readers to explore various types of bygone transport.
As well as a cornucopia of transportation street images, the book reproduces documents, badges, and tokens to provide a comprehensive glimpse of yesteryear; it includes little known facts and stories of life on the road. Learn how the horse car beat out the old-fashioned omnibus to dominate city streets during the Gilded Age, and how the electric streetcar quickly replaced the horse car by the 1890s. Discover the joy that grandparents experienced taking an open bloomer car to Rocky Point or Roger Williams Park. See the rubber-tired, trackless trolleys that ran on electric current from overhead wires. Explore the action of the 1902 railway strike in Providence and Pawtucket that led to the mobilization of the state militia.
Professor Scott Molloy, who has written and lectured widely abciut transit history, first realized his love for labor history as a bus driver. He is president and founder of the Rhode Island Labor History Society and has a permanent collection at the Smithsonian named after him in recognition of his hard work and dedication to preserving our past.
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