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Rails Across Martha’s Vineyard Steam Narrow Gauge and Trolley Lines by Page SC
Rails Across Marthas Vineyard Steam Narrow Gauge and Trolley Lines by Herman Page
Steam narrow gauge and trolley lines
Soft Cover Stapled
72 pages
Copyright 2009
CONTENTS
Introduction 5
Section One
The Narrow Gauge Line on Martha's Vineyard7
ONE Construction of the MVRR8
TWO Here Comes the Train17
THREE Getting Down to Business22
FOUR Riding the Rails of the MVRR25
FIVE Schedules30
SIX The Tide is Running Out33
SEVEN Remains of the Narrow Gauge35
Section Two
The Trolley Lines of Martha's Vineyard39
ONE The Horsecar Era40
TWO The Electric Car Era45
THREE Operations and Stories54
FOUR Vineyard Electric Trolley Cars57
FIVE The Trolley Diaries of John Barnes Tingley61
SIX A Driving Tour of the Martha's Vineyard Trolley Lines 65
The Black Dog Car70
Acknowledgments 71
Bibliography 72
INTRODUCTION
Martha's Vineyard, a roughly triangular-shaped island about 88 square miles in diameter, is located in the Atlantic Ocean about three and a half miles off the south coast of Massachusetts and its mainland point of Cape Cod. "The Vineyard," as part of Massachusetts, is included in a chain of islands off the state's coast that includes Nantucket and the Elizabeth Islands. It is governed as Dukes County. The Island first became famous when early English explorers, including Bartholomew Gosnold, visited the area in the early 1600s. It is believed that Gosnold was the one who gave the Island its name, as that "Martha" was the name of both his second child and mother-in-law.
The Island, originally (and still) inhabited by the Wampanoag Indian tribe, became one of the earliest deaf communities in the United States. Later, Martha's Vineyard and the near-by islands of Nantucket and New Bedford, were the center of whaling operations that spread around the globe. Martha's Vineyard came to have six main communities. These include the seasonal port of Oak Bluffs (originally known as Cottage City between 1887 and 1907), the residential community of Vineyard Haven, and Edgartown, the Island's county seat and largest community by population.
With the decline of whaling, the Vineyard was discovered as a place for summer vacationing in the mid-to-late 1800s. With increasing numbers of visitors, the pleasures of summers on the Vineyard brought people from all around the Northeast who became repeat visitors or seasonal property owners. One of the big draws were the annual Methodist (and later also Baptist) camp meetings during the summer, which over the years brought in thousands of attendees. Many resort hotels and summer homes were built to handle the seasonal population. However, the Island at this time had only dirt or sandy roads in many places. Traveling these roads was by means of horse and buggy or on foot.
It was in this setting that residents of the Vineyard, similar to what much of the U.S. mainland was then doing, turned to the convenience of travel by rail as a solution to their transportation problems. It began in 1873 when a horse-drawn streetcar line was first completed to enable people to travel a short distance from the boat wharf to a religious campground near Oak Bluffs. The following year, in 1874, a more ambitious plan of having a steam-powered train operate between communities was realized with the opening of the Martha's Vineyard Railroad. This was a narrow-gauge line that, at a width of three feet and a length of nine miles, operated from the steamboat wharf at Oak Bluffs, through Edgartown, to a resort hotel in the beach area known as Katama. For about the next 21 years, the little steam train carried tourists and residents alike between Oak Bluffs, Edgartown and Katama. Financial woes finally caused it to cease operations in 1895.
But even as the Vineyard's short-lived experience with narrow-gauge steam ended, rail transportation on its shores would continue in a different manner. While the Oak Bluffs horsecar street railway system had slowly expanded in the years since its inception, it would enter the modern era of street railways when the original lines were electrified in 1895. A second electric streetcar company began service from Vineyard Haven the following year and both companies operated independently until the two systems merged in 1906. The combined system operated over approximately seven miles of track. Ultimately known as the Oak Bluffs Street Railway, the company's electric trolleys served the steamboat wharves, residential districts, resort hotels and entertainment complexes in the Oak Bluffs-Vineyard Haven vicinity. However, beset by competition from the automobile and a need for scrap materials during World War I, trolley service halted in 1918. Thus ended 45 years of street railway service to Martha's Vineyard, as well as any kind of rail-borne transportation on the Island.
Since their abandonment, many of the details regarding both the narrow-gauge railroad and the trolley lines on Martha's Vineyard have been lost on account of time. However, it is hoped this book, by pulling together existing photographs, along with the remnants of facts known about the two differing operations, will give the reader an opportunity to learn how transportation by rail was once part of everyday life on the Vineyard. It is likely an era never to be seen again, but which can still make for an interesting ride in one's own mind. Come and get on board!
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