Curator's Choice

Episode 50: Boonsboro Trolley Station Museum

• Ayla Anderson

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All aboard as we delve into Maryland's captivating trolley history at the Boonsboro Trolley Station Museum. Uncover how these transport marvels transformed rural connections, surprising even in funeral processions. With Reuben Moss leading the way, we unravel the intricate impact of trolleys on local trade, education, and the agricultural economy.

💡 Boonesboro's Trolley Tales: Cantaloupes, Power Plants, and Electric Parks! 🎡
This episode delves into the history of Boonesboro, famed for its juicy cantaloupes and bustling trolley system—one of the nation's largest rural-urban networks. Experience the thrill of riding these trolleys and discover the Frederick Company's entrepreneurial zeal as it powered beyond transportation, electrifying rural Maryland with power plants and vibrant electric parks that became community hubs of leisure and excitement.

🎶 Trolley's Last Stand: From Wheels to Wisdom! 📚
Discover the fate of the final four trolleys, some transformed into vibrant libraries! Finally, we share the story of a Washington D.C. DJ who had a dual passion for Beatles tunes and trolley lore, whose efforts have preserved the echoes of the trolley bells in a museum that stands as a testament to this bygone but never-dimming era of transportation's enchanting past.

The Hagerstown & Frederick Railway Historical Society
Oral History Project
This Society is collecting visual and audio records of individuals with stories of the trolley line. These records are added to the Society's archives where they can be used for education and research. If you have a story you would like to share, reach out to Reuben at reuben@hrhs.org or write to:

H&FRHS Inc.
P.O. Box 1314
Frederick, MD 21702

www.hfrhs.org/oralhistory

🔗 Episode Links

National Road Museum: NationalRDFoundation.org

Hagerstown & Frederick Railway Historical Society: https://hfrhs.org 



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Curator's Choice - A podcast for history nerds and museum lovers

Ayla Sparks:

Hi, I'm Ayla Sparks and this is Curator's Choice, a podcast for history nerds and museum lovers. From ancient relics to modern marvels, each episode of this show features a new museum and a curator's choice of some amazing artifacts housed there. These guardians of history will share insights, anecdotes and the often untold stories that breathe life into the artifacts they protect. Thanks for tuning in to this Mighty Oak Media production and enjoy the show. So trolleys I'm not going to lie. Whenever I think of trolley, I immediately just think of San Francisco. No idea that trolleys were even on this side of the country. And wow, they were incredible here.

Rueben Moss:

Trolleys were a big deal nationwide, well, worldwide actually. You do think of San Francisco and a lot of people think of the cable cars, which are technically not trolleys. You're right, that's exactly what I think of. Now, san Francisco does have trolleys. They're along the wharf, along the waterline. They're along the wharf, along the water line, but cable cars, which is what most people think of, actually run by a constantly moving metal cable under the street and they just grab onto it. That's why they all go the same speed. Trolleys get their name from the overhead pole. There's a single pole the little arm that reaches out, yeah.

Rueben Moss:

They're a wheel or a carbon slider at the end that rubs against a copper wire and that wire provides electricity. Different trolleys were a little bit different but on average 550 to 650 volts of DC power it's a lot of electricity Provides the electricity to operate motors in the wheels and each trolley can be individually controlled. It's basically an extension cord and the same thing. That eventually evolved into larger, mainline high-speed electric trains. We have today Some of the same technology.

Rueben Moss:

It was developed in Europe early in the railroad era, 1830s. They were already experimenting with electric rail cars. Nothing really happened. There were a couple semi-successful experiments over the years, but it was 1888.

Rueben Moss:

A gentleman named Frank Sprague, who had worked for Thomas Edison, got his own ideas, studied other inventors in the world, especially from Europe, who were also experimenting with electricity, came up with his own ideas and designs for electric motors. He set up the first successful electric trolley system in Richmond, virginia, in the US, in the US, in Richmond, in Richmond. Now there was one in the Baltimore area that was already running, but it was kind of an experimental thing still and it wasn't self-propelled. It had a little engine that ran on the electricity that pulled a horse wagon. So a lot of towns had horse-drawn wagons that were running on rails but not self-propelled, so it was sort of an electric horse wagon at the time. So Frank Sprague's designs actually incorporated it all into one vehicle, and not only did it work well, but it also went up hills, and that's how the local system came about. So by the time local people were getting involved, there were hundreds of trolley lines across the country.

Ayla Sparks:

So people were very familiar with trolleys.

Rueben Moss:

People were very familiar with trolleys. The trolley systems were big, were small and I should point out there are two types of trolley system and it comes into play with some of the technicalities here. There are streetcar systems, which are usually smaller, lighter, run in the city streets, maybe connect to some suburbs. They were the ones that lasted the longest, honestly, and those are mostly for people. Those are mostly for people. Sometimes they'd have freight. Occasionally in cities they'd even have funeral cars that were just for carrying funeral parties with the casket and everything Very, very interesting.

Ayla Sparks:

That is crazy.

Rueben Moss:

Were they like all black. They came in different colors I don't think I've seen a color photo but some of them would have, like the door on the side to slide the casket in, sometimes be glass, like a wagon hearse would be a glass or the back of a modern hearse so you could see the casket go by and then the rest of the trolley was seating for the funeral party and they just go straight to the cemetery. The local system didn't have that but they did pass a couple cemeteries so it's possible they did have rate for bodies.

Ayla Sparks:

Oh my gosh, this is crazy.

Rueben Moss:

Then there's also inner urban lines, and inner urban lines were trolley systems designed to connect towns to other towns, and that's what we had here in Central Maryland was an inner urban system that also ran streetcars, and so that's the definitive point with it. This was a major interurban line for its type. It was a rural interurban, one of the largest rural interurban systems in the country and the last in the mid-Atlantic to operate a schedule. Other interurban lines a lot of people think of, if they're familiar with trolleys, would be things like the lines around Chicago or New York, where it's big, high-speed electric trolleys that are later replaced by elevated trains or high-speed trains or just retired altogether. But those had hundreds of millions of passengers and were constantly running multiple units that were connected together. This was a single trolley running through farmland from town to town, which was a lot of those. They popped up everywhere. There wasn't already railroad service and a lot of them only lasted a few years.

Ayla Sparks:

And they were short, right, they didn't go very far.

Rueben Moss:

Some of them went from one town to another, connected two or three towns. Here in Central Maryland at its peak, over two dozen communities were connected by this trolley line.

Ayla Sparks:

Well, and what's really interesting, you were telling me in the museum itself, the way that Lowell-Boonesboro got their trolley line started is a pretty cool story.

Rueben Moss:

So there were two different companies here there was the Fredericton Middletown Railway Company and there was the Hdletown Railway Company and there was the Hagerstown Railway.

Ayla Sparks:

And how? For people who aren't familiar with Maryland, how far away are these two towns?

Rueben Moss:

They're like maybe 25 miles.

Ayla Sparks:

Roughly 20 to 30 miles.

Rueben Moss:

Yeah, yeah, today you can drive the difference in about half hour to 40 minutes. It's not too far away, but at the time it was really hard to get from town to town. The National Road was really the only way to get to a lot of these communities and it had fallen into disrepair. So for the people of Middletown whose livelihood depended on the National Road they were a farm community, they had been a stagecoach location, so they had depended on people coming to town, stopping trading stagecoaches, getting a bite to eat, staying the night in between their stagecoaches on their trip.

Rueben Moss:

The decline of the road because of railroads and, to a lesser point, canals, meant that the town's economy was starting to struggle and the farmers were seeing people in other communities along railroads get their goods transported to the bigger cities and making more money, while the people in Middletown were looking at several hours just to go the six miles from their town to the city of Frederick just because the road was in bad shape and they had to go over a mountain. So people got together, started a company, tried to get investors and couldn't get anybody involved from outside of town, and so the company spent three years just selling stock to local businessmen, farmers, local families and eventually had enough money to get some secondhand supplies and borrow some equipment and start building in 1896. So they started in 1893 with their fundraising and began construction in 1896 and finally got something running in the middle late August in that year to the top of the mountain.

Ayla Sparks:

And where were they trying to get to? To Middletown. Well, so, from where, though? From Frederick, from?

Rueben Moss:

the city.

Ayla Sparks:

So they were trying to take it from Middletown to Frederick to sell all the goods To sell their goods in Frederick or connect with the railroads that were already in Frederick.

Rueben Moss:

So there were a lot of options. Once you got to the city, you had a lot of options on where you could sell your goods, either locally or go to Baltimore or go to basically any other city in the country. You couldn't do that if you couldn't get over the mountain before the goods spoiled. So the construction began. Instead of starting in Middletown, where the money came from, they started in Frederick, where the city wasn't all that interested but was willing to allow it to get built, and the construction finally opened the line to Braddock Heights, which was the top of the mountain. There was no town, nothing, up there. It wasn't even called Braddock Heights at the time, it was just the top of Catoctin Mountain, and the opening day of service just to the top of the mountain for picnics was packed. People in Frederick wanted to get to the top of the mountain.

Rueben Moss:

A little while later there was a extension to the county fairgrounds because the county fair took place the next month and 16,000 tickets were sold and they only owned three trolleys at the time. That's a little bit of a discrepancy. Yes, 16,000 tickets were sold to get people to the fair and it was a four-day event and how many people can normally fit on a trolley? About 40 at a time for the trolleys they had. So they did not have nearly enough. They did not have. They were able to do it, but it was a lot of work and those trolleys really were put to the test. It wasn't until October of that year that Middletown was finally reached and they finally built a station outside of town at the top of a hill where women complained that they couldn't go into the city in high heels because they had to climb this really steep hill to get to the station. So they eventually built a new station closer to town and people were happy.

Ayla Sparks:

Because anyone who would have been coming from Frederick out here, they would be coming out here for more of like a good time, enjoyment, pleasure area yeah, out to the country, rather than the goods from Middletown going to Frederick. So you're kind of having to comply or meet the conveniences of two different kinds of people.

Rueben Moss:

Yes, exactly, and anybody going from Middletown to Frederick. They were going into the big city. They wanted to be dressed up, they were going for shopping. They didn't want to have to have a whole lot of strain to carry things back from their shopping trip. But the main reason for the line from Middletown to Frederick was freight. So one of the three trolleys they purchased was able to pull little wagons over the mountain and the company claimed to be the first trolley company in the country to pull freight over a mountain with electric power. Eventually you'd have big railroads pulling big freight trains with massive electric locomotives out west for a brief time. But this was a significant advance. But it's something that they claimed. We've never been able to prove for sure that they were. We're not the first to pull freight, but they were possibly the first to pull freight over a mountain with electric power.

Rueben Moss:

But at the same time all that was happening in Hagerstown. Two investors from Harrisburg, pennsylvania, saw Hagerstown as a way to make money. They had a lot of friends with a lot of money. They got a lot of money together and they built this state-of-the-art streetcar line. It was an interurban but they considered it streetcar between Hagerstown and the nearby community of Williamsport along the Potomac River which had a lot of industry growing. And when was this? This was at the same time, 1896. So they started their fundraising after Frederick began or the Middletown line began construction. They started service between Hagerstown and Williamsport two weeks before Frederick began, so they started after they had enough money to finish first. They were successful. They had a lot of investment. They started expanding immediately.

Rueben Moss:

By 1902, they had reached Boonesboro here and the idea was actually to reach the battlefield at Antietam, sharpsburg, because that battlefields were beginning to become a tourist destination. At the time it already was. Some of the steam railroads in the area already had promoted tourism. I believe it was the Norfolk and Western Railroad had built a station not far from Sharpsburg where the battlefield is, and they had actually built a sidewalk from their station into the battlefield where the town didn't really have a sidewalk except for in town, just because they had so many tourists coming. So they thought that it was going to be extended all the way out there.

Rueben Moss:

We don't really know why they stopped here in Boonesboro and never continued. They had started surveying and grading and then just stopped. But Boonesboro had farm goods. We had cantaloupes and raspberries and peaches, which were the main exports from town. There were a lot of stores here in Boonesboro and so a lot of goods would come in by trolley as well. They transported the mail here from Hagerstown, and a lot of people coming into town to go shopping or leaving Boonesboro to go into Hagerstown to go to the theaters or the department stores became main fares for the trolley.

Ayla Sparks:

And apparently Boonesboro had some spectacular melons.

Rueben Moss:

Yes, I have never seen any photographs showing exactly how big, but the cantaloupes that were grown here were said to be some of the most delicious cantaloupes ever grown and could have been, in some cases, as large as a basketball. I can't substantiate that with any proof. But they were very popular from the time they were very popular, at least regionally, as one of the best cantaloupes in the country.

Rueben Moss:

But you won't see them now you won't see them now. I have been told by the descendants of some of the farmers that the original strain of seeds was lost years ago. It's a shame. They still grow cantaloupes here and they are still delicious cantaloupes, but they're not quite the world-class cantaloupes that you hear about from the past.

Ayla Sparks:

That's fantastic. So you have Hagerstown kind of more for the theater and the entertainment business. You have Boonesboro. That is really for trade.

Rueben Moss:

Agriculture trade, still passengers, there were still things to do around here. People were still coming here on their way to Antietam. You just have to take a horse the rest of the way, or a vehicle of some kind.

Ayla Sparks:

So after the success of both of these two different trolley lines, eventually they merge. Yes.

Rueben Moss:

So the Hagerstown Company wanted to expand. They actually wanted to buy the Frederick Company. The Frederick Company wasn't interested in selling, but they there was a little town in the middle between Hagerstown and Frederick known as Myersville that had also built their own trolley line to connect the Middletown line. They sold their track to Hagerstown's company because they wanted a connection to Hagerstown. And so the Hagerstown company, halfway between Hagerstown and Boonesboro, started building over the mountain to connect to Myersville and on December 1st 1904, they were able to take the first Hagerstown trolley all the way to Frederick and became the first through service Took two hours where by horse and wagon, unless you were taking a stagecoach or a very fast horse, you could spend a couple days taking that trip by the road. So massive improvement. It was a massive improvement. It was a little pricey so you didn't have everybody using it. A lot of people only used it for special occasions. But then you did, over time, have people who became commuters because it was cost effective for them.

Rueben Moss:

And one thing I didn't mention at the museum it also became the way for students to get to schools. There were no school buses at the time and so the schools would subsidize or, if they weren't subsidizing. The parents could buy cheap tickets and you'd have one room school houses in the area for early grades. But if you wanted to let your child go to high school or if you were going to college, you had to get to the city and so you could get a student ticket, a student pass, to go into the city to get further education. And so it opened up the opportunity for families that couldn't otherwise get to better schooling because it wasn't mandatory and it wasn't provided, but it was free or cheap if they could get to it. Suddenly you're opening up these other opportunities for poorer families that didn't own their own vehicle to allow education for their children.

Ayla Sparks:

What would it have been like when you were actually riding one of these trolleys? Was it kind of like, I imagine, a train car today, where you kind of purchase your ticket, you sit and ride and enjoy yourself till you get there. You can have snacks? There must not have been a flight attendant walking up and down the trolley line. No flight attendant, no snacks.

Rueben Moss:

No snacks, you could bring your own snacks. Okay, the trolleys were very much like a regular train car. They would have a controller on both ends so that the driver would be on one end of the car or the other. They'd come to a dead end so the seats actually could change direction. They had little handles so in between trips the driver would change what direction the seats were facing. Most of the trolleys in the area had either a wood bench or what was called vertan, which is a wicker-like varnish material. It's not wicker but it resembles wicker. It's varnished. It would be padded seats made of I think it might be bamboo strips. That was easy to clean, but once it started breaking it would start catching on your clothes, so they had to keep it well-maintained. Usually it would get coated with a lot of lacquer to keep it nice and varnished. In later years they started replacing it with fake leather material. But you'd have a lot of rocking back and forth. It was kind of loud. You'd have that clickety-clack of regular railroad tracks you'd expect.

Ayla Sparks:

How fast were they going?

Rueben Moss:

They'd go about 20 to 25 miles per hour on level ground, which was actually pretty fast at first, because we're talking turn of the century, when cars had a speed limit of eight miles per hour.

Ayla Sparks:

You feel like they're riding a roller coaster.

Rueben Moss:

Yes, which at the time steam trains were going a lot faster by then. But for trolley service that was pretty significant. You're running on electricity, about 600 volts, as I said, and it could take hills, which was why they went with trolleys, because there are two mountain ranges between Frederick and Hagerstown, so they could handle the steep climbs, they could handle sharp turns. The sharp turns were the loudest point because you get a very loud squeal of the wheels as you're making those turns, especially in the city.

Ayla Sparks:

It's like when you're in a parking garage and you're making a slow turn.

Rueben Moss:

Yes, yes, a little bit louder than that, though. It can be almost deafening. There are some places you can go ride trolleys around the country and experience this for yourself. But you'd either get a prepaid ticket at a station there were stations in some of the major communities. A lot of times you could get a round trip if you were going to go and come back. If you were paying for a trip that involved trading trolleys at a point you would get a transfer. So you get a little ticket that you could hand over. That was good for the next passing trolley, so you couldn't stop and enjoy yourself in a layover and then get on another trolley. You had to get on the next one or else it would be void. But if you didn't have a prepaid ticket, you could wave down a trolley anywhere along the line and they'd stop and let you in. You'd just pay the cash fare for whatever the closest station was.

Ayla Sparks:

Oh, wow. So this is perfect, because if you were to be going to one of these trolley stations, that happens to be what the museum is.

Rueben Moss:

Yes, so tell us a little bit about the museum. This trolley stop, so what we have the museum housed in is the last surviving purpose-built trolley station in Washington County.

Ayla Sparks:

And it almost didn't exist.

Rueben Moss:

It almost didn't exist. The town of Boonesboro acquired the property after a hardware store that had been here closed. It was part of a plan to redevelop the park that's just behind the property and there were a lot of derelict buildings that were cleansed safe. So they had contracted to bulldoze. There's now a road that wasn't there that goes alongside the station bulldoze. There's now a road that wasn't there that goes alongside the station, and the town manager at the time had decided to get in touch with a local historian to look into whether any of the buildings had historical significance. And gets a call from the historian one day saying yes, one of the buildings is actually the last trolley station in the county. So, knowing that the bulldozer had just been unloaded, the town manager ran down the street and jumped in front of the bulldozer when it was five to 10 feet away from the building, with his hands up waving for them to stop. Otherwise, if he had been another minute, the station probably would have just been knocked down and been beyond saving.

Ayla Sparks:

And it sounds like a dramatization, but you actually have people who are a part of the museum now, who remember seeing him running down the street.

Rueben Moss:

Yes, yes, so I have been guaranteed. That's exactly how it happened, even though it sounds like something out of a movie or a TV show.

Ayla Sparks:

That's fantastic. Yeah, so the museum? Well, the trolley station is saved.

Rueben Moss:

It is saved and it was restored. There was a architectural class in Baltimore that came out, did a study on both buildings, actually the trolley station and the main hardware store building which will be the National Road Museum right next door. They gave recommendations for architectural details, suggested where an original wall that had been removed should go back in place and what it should be built out of, and just to study on the property itself. And those recommendations were used between 2005 and 2009 when the station was restored.

Ayla Sparks:

And so now, whenever you come in, the first thing that you encounter is the waiting room. That is quite small, I would say so cozy, I guess would be a preferential term.

Rueben Moss:

Well, it is very small. It would have had benches. It would have had a ticket desk. We've represented as best as we can right now what it would have looked like. Inside we have a stove. It's a little bit larger than the stove that would have been in there. It was probably a potbelly stove originally, but we have a relatively locally cast stove in there to represent the only heat the building would have had at the time. But it was an improvement over what people had. We believe the building was built around 1910. That was in response to a lot of complaints from people who even went in the newspaper locally that passengers stated that they were suffering from having the floor as a platform or the ground as a platform and the sky as a roof. So if you were waiting for the trolley you had to hide in one of the local businesses if it was raining. The office was in an old factory that was nearby but not where the actual stop was.

Ayla Sparks:

So you could get a ticket here but you didn't have anywhere to wait for the trolley. Well, it makes sense for the town itself to have more of a station, because then you can also kind of increase the amount of work, well, the amount of commerce happening there.

Rueben Moss:

Yes, so the station has the little waiting room in the corner, and the rest of the building was used to store freight in between transporting between vehicles, wagons or trucks and the trolleys. The trolleys actually came to the front of the building, while vehicles could pull up to the side and unload goods or load goods between the building.

Ayla Sparks:

And underground. In front you still have some of the original rail lines.

Rueben Moss:

Yes, the freight siding part of the freight siding is still in place under the front grass. Eventually we hope to expose it so people can actually see that original rail. But we will have a representation of the passenger platform track that was removed when it was retired sometime soon, hopefully within the next year.

Ayla Sparks:

So within the timeline of having these two companies begin and then kind of merge and then merge into one gigantically long trolley line, when does the station come into play?

Rueben Moss:

This station comes in right before the merger. So this would have still been a product of the Hagerstown Railway Company, which was still quite a large company, but it was accruing debts at that point. So they were trying to expand, trying to improve. At the same time. This building was built though the Frederick Company, the Frederick of Middletown, under the management of a man named Emery Koblentz.

Rueben Moss:

The Frederick of Middletown under the management of a man named Emery Koblentz, who was a Middletown area banker and businessman involved in a lot of other ventures. He had become president of the company in 1905. He took the company and started investing in a lot of infrastructure. So they built a new Frederick Terminal Station, new offices, new trolley maintenance building, replaced a lot of bridges and bought a steam railroad that went from Frederick to Thurmont and converted that to electric, which over doubled the size of their system and connected them with a Baltimore to Cumberland railroad line. So he was responsible for a lot of expansion and the company actually got renamed to the Frederick Railroad and he started buying power companies in the area, started selling power to communities and expanding the power holdings of the company. Since they were already running the trolleys off of electrical power, it just made sense to start selling their excess electrical power to people and expanding that service and making more money that way.

Ayla Sparks:

So were they actually generating power that they then used for the trolley, or the trolley used itself generated power?

Rueben Moss:

They generated power. So trolley companies would start coal power plants. The Hagerstown Company built their first one in Williamsport. Two years later they had to build a bigger one outside of Hagerstown and the Frederick Company bought power from an existing gas and power company that was very small in Frederick before two years later building their own power plant near Middletown and then they bought the one that had been providing power to them.

Ayla Sparks:

But the trolleys didn't take that much power, so they had excess power.

Rueben Moss:

They had excess power, they had to generate AC power and transmit that, because AC power, which is what we're used to using today in our homes, that can be sent over long distances without really losing energy.

Rueben Moss:

But the trolleys ran on DC power which after a while it starts to lose its energy. So they couldn't go more than about a mile before they had to get an influx of fresh power. So they would build a power substation every two miles and run the power poles along the trolley line. And every two miles at these substations the AC electric which was generated in large amounts was converted to DC power to run the trolleys. And then they had all that extra AC and DC power they could work with. So they started wiring nearby houses, started running new power lines to nearby communities and farms. I like to point out that in the Midwest and some of the Western communities there were areas where you didn't see electricity until the 1950s because it didn't make sense for a power company to run all those wires for a small town. But where there was a trolley line you always have the opportunity for electricity and farmers here in our area before 1900 could have upgraded to electric motors if they wanted to for water pumps and electric lighting.

Ayla Sparks:

Where there's a trolley, there's a way. Where there's a trolley, there's a way. So then they started selling. The trolley companies started selling electric things for houses.

Rueben Moss:

Yes, they started appliance stores. They started delivering catalogs from partner companies like Westinghouse. You could order appliances from the trolley company. They'd have their name stamped on the back of recipe books that would be given out, so you'd know you could get your kitchen appliances from them. And you could even get it delivered by trolley if you lived along the trolley line.

Ayla Sparks:

So these trolleys were kind of like meccas for business almost they were, and I mean like so Braddock Heights, the top of that mountain in between. Didn't that become some huge resort situation so that the trolleys could take more passengers to and from?

Rueben Moss:

Yes. So a lot of railroad companies at the time were starting amusement parks. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad had an amusement park at Harper's Ferry on an island. There was a park called Penmar on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, just northeast of Hagerstown, that the Western Maryland Railroad owned. And there were other parks around the country. Trolley companies saw that as an opportunity as well. So you had all these parks pop up, called electric parks or trolley parks. There were several in the area. There's actually some in DC area. Glen Elko Park is probably the most famous. That was a trolley park. It was served by the trolleys. Passengers would ride the trolley to get to the park and go home.

Rueben Moss:

So Braddock Heights was one of those. There was nothing but farmland on the top of the mountain when they first started talking about the trolley line in 1893, they built a three-story observation tower so you could go up to the top of the mountain on the road, look down and see the city of Frederick, look the other direction and see Middletown. So around that observation tower on this farmland the company executives got together, bought the top of the mountain, parceled it out into lots, renamed the top of the mountain Braddock Heights after General Braddock who had passed through one of his failed expedition to Fort Duquesne. Along with George Washington, they started this resort community which had buildings built to resemble beach homes, where you could go to the boardwalk and rent a room in a beach house overlooking the ocean, except you were on the top of a mountain, similar breeze, nice and cool on a summer day.

Rueben Moss:

And they started an amusement park right on the edge of town, on the highest point of the mountain, around the observation tower, with a skating rink, a carousel, there was a miniature train ride, a theater, a dance hall, a giant slide just so many attractions. At one point there was a playground that included one of the retired trolleys. So all of these things. And it lasted for a long time. The company eventually sold it, either in the late 40s, early 50s, into private ownership, and it lasted, I believe, into the 60s before it finally started to decline and went out of business.

Ayla Sparks:

So what happened? I mean, it sounds like trolleys were really big business and they were fantastic, but they're not so much anymore. There's nothing left, but what? Four trolley cars.

Rueben Moss:

There are four surviving trolleys. A bunch of the original buildings, especially in Frederick County, still stand, but roads the same thing that trolleys took over because of the poor quality of roads. Once roads were improved, the automobile became more available. The Model T became more affordable. Thanks Henry Ford, trolley killer.

Rueben Moss:

Once the roads were more passable and were more comfortable, people started getting their own automobiles and didn't need the trolleys. Trucks started being able to transport goods directly from the farm to the city rather than needing to carry them by wagon from the farm to the trolley and then load it up, and so it became more of a. We can go wherever we want when we want, to carry them by wagon from the farm to the trolley and then load it up, and so it became more of a. We can go wherever we want when we want, because we have our own vehicle type situation On our own timeline. On our own timeline, which that's still why mass transit doesn't thrive in the United States like it does in Europe, because we don't have as close communities and people can do what they want when they want.

Rueben Moss:

So you have a lot of advertising start appearing and in some of the big cities you had the actual automobile manufacturers start buying up trolley lines and replacing them with buses for their own interests. Locally it was literally just because of the fact that the roads were better, and so people didn't see this big electric train that was loud and slower and made a lot of noise and rocked you back and forth. It became an eyesore for a lot of people and so by the time they were starting to close the trolley lines, you'd see newspaper articles with pictures of a trolley surrounded by traffic saying soon this eyesore will be gone and people will have the freedom to use the better mode of transport, internal combustion. And it's kind of an irony now that we're looking at more environmentally friendly electric vehicles when people really thought that the automobile, the internal combustion gas engine, was replacing the outmoded, useless electric power. So we come full circle and realize we were a little bit wrong there.

Ayla Sparks:

Maybe, maybe. So Maybe a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. So then they kind of started to decommission these trolleys and then eventually it ended in the local area. When was that?

Rueben Moss:

So the main line actually closed during one of the realignments of Route 40. So the alternate 40, which is what we have in the area, is the original Route 40. The state wanted to build a new Route 40 from Frederick to Hagerstown. That was a little bit more of a straight shot because they could do more excavating. They could work a little bit better with more roads, make it a little bit more of a straight shot because they could do more excavating. They could work a little bit better with more roads, make it a little bit wider without sharp turns. And the route they chose happened to cross the trolley line at seven places, five of them being on the slope of the mountain. So the state actually came to the company and said we will save you the trouble of going through the abandonment process. We'll allow you to abandon right now. We'll save you the trouble of going through the abandonment process. We'll allow you to abandon right now. We'll give you some money if you close the line between Myersville and Funkstown. And so the company said, sure, we'll do that. And so October of 1938 was the last trip from Frederick to Hagerstown with trolley 172. That same day the last trip from Boonesboro to Hagerstown took place with trolley number 151. And after that the tracks were torn up, the new highway was built. That was the story of the main line and we suddenly were back to two different sections, the original two sections of the line, but this time run by the same company.

Rueben Moss:

Hagerstown kept their service until after World War II, 1947, august 4th was the last trip from Hagerstown to Williamsport. A lot of fanfare, locals, a lot of the retired trolley drivers got together and were posed in front of the trolley with their picture taken. Trolley 172 was painted up as the last trolley in Washington County and the last three trolleys in the Hagerstown area went together, went down to Funkstown. Everybody got off the trolley and got on one of the buses that was replacing the trolley and rode back to Hagerstown. Two of the trolleys were sold to be used as cabins and 172 was taken as the newest trolley they had, was taken over the mountain back to Frederick by truck so that they could replace two trolleys that had been in a crash in Frederick. So Middletown came. A month later Trolley 172 again became the last trolley from Middletown to Frederick. Had tried to get the paint off but you could see those photos from the last month of service in Middletown. It's got these scratched out words last trolley in Washington County. So the irony is it was the last trolley in Middletown and Washington County with that same paint and that was the last official trip. Day later, I recently learned, apparently a group of local rail fans and employees convinced the company to let them take one last trip to Middletown and back, just with them and for the fun of it. They took the sign on the front because the trolleys had signs on the ends showing what route it was, on what town it was going to. They took the sign and stuck the funeral sign. So the last trip between Frederick and Middletown on the original line was the funeral trip of the trolley. But that was the last day of September.

Rueben Moss:

In 1947 was the last official trip to Middletown Trolleys between Frederick and Thurmont, which had been that steam railroad that they bought because of the freight connection with the Western Maryland Railway there and the fact that people could ride the trolleys to Thurmont and then get on a Western Maryland train and go to Penmar Park from there. That remained in service for several years. In early 1954, the company went to the state, asked if they could retire the Thurmont Line passenger service and replace it with buses. And it only took a couple weeks before they were allowed to. And February 4th 1954, it was a little bit of a drizzly, rainy February day. People got together, watched Car 172 and its sister 171 leave Frederick, went on a round trip up to Thurmont. They stopped. A number of local radio stations were there and there were speeches at the Western Maryland train station in front of the trolleys. And they went back and people were along the trolley truck to see the last trolleys go.

Rueben Moss:

Hood College, which had actually been built around the trolley line on the edge of Frederick, had been a major customer of the trolley line. They actually had their own stop for the girls who went to the then-girls' school. A group of girls gathered and sang songs, farewell to the trolley and gave flowers to the company president before they continued. Then there was a banquet after they returned. Then again a group of employees got permission to do one last trip for themselves who weren't allowed on that last trip. But by noon, february 20, 1954, there was no more passenger service on the Hagerstown and Frederick system which I've mentioned interurban lines earlier. It was the last interurban line, some say east of Chicago, I like to, at least say, mid-atlantic, the last interurban trolley system to keep a schedule in the United States. In this area there were some city systems that remained in service into the 60s Baltimore, philadelphia, dc and a few of them have actually come back since then in smaller capacity.

Ayla Sparks:

So the last four remaining? You said two of them had gone into being cabins.

Rueben Moss:

Yeah, they all had after trolley life. So all of the trolleys most of them, were made primarily out of wood. It didn't make sense to burn them like they did out in California with the piles of trolleys. You'll find photos of where they would just stack them and catch them on fire and then scrap the metal. There wasn't enough metal for it. I'm glad they didn't do that, yeah, so a lot of them were sold, became some of the earliest mobile homes because you could buy the trolley for really cheap. It came without the wheels. Sometimes they'd take the electric equipment out so that they could use them for parts because they kept running freight for a few years after that. But you'd have a pre-made structure with windows, set it down on a foundation, put your furniture in. You got a cheap home.

Rueben Moss:

The one number five, which was built in 1920 out of scrap parts, was called the Express Motor. It was basically a freight unit that was a self-propelled railroad box car so you could load it with goods and it had controls in both ends to run itself and it could pull up to eight freight cars. That became a garden shed and then ended up going to a museum in the 1960s in Pennsylvania and they gave it to the Hagerstown and Frederick Railway Historical Society in the early 2000s. We had just started our organization at that point so we couldn't afford to keep it, so we donated it to the town of Thurmont and they have taken great care of it. It's got its own little park and they've been working on making a segment of the trolley line through their town into a trail.

Rueben Moss:

Right alongside it, car 150, that was bought secondhand. It was a cabin near Frederick. It might have been part of a restaurant. There were four trolleys similar of an identical design that came secondhand at the same time. We know at least three of them were used as a restaurant in Frederick for a while Not sure if this was one of them and got moved to be a cabin or just went straight to being a cabin. It was saved in the early 1990s by a gentleman named Don Easterday who moved it, took the cabin down that had been built around it, moved it to Myersville and for 1994 until 2012, when his property hosted the annual Myersville Trolley Festival, which got a lot more people interested in the trolley history and helped the trolley survive. He kept doing work on it. When he passed away in 2016, unfortunately, his family sold the trolley to the town, who worked with the county to put it inside of the town's new library.

Rueben Moss:

So you can now go and sit inside of an original Hagerstown and Frederick trolley and read a book. The other two there is car 168, which was the first steel-sided trolley they ever bought. It was also the first of the signature design. Basically, if anybody sees pictures of the Hagerstown and Frederick usually they're going to think of this one style of trolley that was really kind of unique to the line. Only a couple other trolley companies in the whole country used them. So it's the original. It is at the Hagerstown Roundhouse Museum, oh yep. And then the last trolley, 171, which was one of those last two to Traveling Frederick. That one was saved as a cabin and is still a cabin, and I'm not going to say where because I respect the owner's privacy. And for a while it was thought that might've been 172, the last trolley, but the design, the number of windows and the actual fact you could still see some of the number matches 171.

Ayla Sparks:

So if someone were to want to become a trolley conductor back in the day, how would they go about learning that? To become a trolley conductor back in the day, how would they go about learning that?

Rueben Moss:

Well it's actually not that difficult and there are a number of museums that you can actually volunteer and learn to do that today. Oh wow, they're always seeking volunteers for that. But first you'd have to have an in with the company you could apply. Usually they'd need some good references. You could start at a fairly young age. I'm not sure what the youngest would have been. Usually you'd start working in the shops or a handyman or something small, unless you had a really good reference. But you could. You'd train as a trainee. Basically they had a special little badge. I've only seen one of them surviving in a private collection of a student driver. But they're really easy to operate, surprisingly, because there are only three main controls. You've got switches and fuses and lights.

Ayla Sparks:

It's not like being a flight pilot today. It's not like being a pilot.

Rueben Moss:

You have a reverser which basically chooses if you're going forward or backwards. You have an air brake, maybe a manual or a manual brake, maybe an air brake, depending on the trolley. The manual brake, when some of them, is the only way to control stopping, but a lot of them have an air brake, where that's what's controlling your speed rather than a throttle. And then you have the throttle, which just kind of clicks into different notches. So to drive a trolley, all you need to learn how to do is judge your own speed, provide the power with the throttle and then shut it off, let it glide and control the speed with the brake.

Rueben Moss:

Okay, because the controller just takes and is like an adjustable switch for like a dimmer. There are different sets of power that go to different numbers of motors and resistor banks on the bottom of the trolley, a lot of technical electrical equipment to reduce the amount of power going to the motors, and so you're just giving power, kind of like you see with modern electric cars you give it power, it goes. So you don't need to constantly be giving it power. You just give it enough power to get going, let it glide for a while and then give it a little, rather than driving a car where you're constantly putting your foot on the pedal.

Ayla Sparks:

Would you have needed a book like this?

Rueben Moss:

No, the book that I have here actually belonged to a gentleman named Thomas Holler. He was one of the founders of the Frederick and Middletown Railway and this book was part of his private library. It's got his stamp in it. It came to us just a couple of years ago from the collection of a gentleman named Carol James, who I'll give a little more detail on him in a moment. But the book was. It's a manual from 1893 on the technical aspects of starting a trolley line.

Ayla Sparks:

Oh, wow.

Rueben Moss:

So this little book is a reference guide that would have been used while they were building the Frederick Trolley System, so it's really the manual that he at least would have used. I'm sure some of the other gentlemen may have had copies of the same book, and Thomas Haller his name pops up from time to time. He was one of the founders. He was involved into the 1920s so at least 30 years and spent a lot of that time as the company treasurer, I believe, and so it's fascinating to have this book that shows how to start a trolley line. That belonged to one of the guys that started the trolley line, and hopefully we'll be able to get it scanned here soon so that you can actually read through it. It's a little bit delicate now.

Ayla Sparks:

I can imagine how old is it. When was it written?

Rueben Moss:

1893, which was when they started fundraising. To put things into perspective again, frank Sprague's first successful passenger trolley service in Richmond, virginia, was 1888. So this is the first five years of practical trolleys. This book was written for the hundreds of startup trolley companies, and a lot of the trolley companies were already failing because you needed a lot of money, a lot of investment. So the fact that the little company here survived is significant. There was nearby Martinsburg. West Virginia had a trolley system that started in the early 1890s and by the time 1896 rolled around they had already gone out of business. So three of their trolley cars actually became the first three to serve in Hagerstown secondhand.

Ayla Sparks:

So hopefully this piece will you know relatively as soon as funding will allow, be able to be part of your archive that people can access. Yes, but we also do have another artifact that you can see if you do come to the museum.

Rueben Moss:

Yes, so we have. I like to refer to it as the big piece in reference to the big piece of the Titanic that was brought up that people think about if you think of Titanic exhibits. The gentleman named Carol James we also got the book from his collection was a radio DJ. He was born in Frederick, grew up in Hagerstown right along the trolley line. His father worked for the trolley company that had become the power company by then, potomac Edison, and he was just fascinated by the trolleys. But he grew up and got interested in radio a little bit more. So instead of following his father's footsteps, he started working for the local radio station. He was able to provide a broadcast for the Hagerstown radio station WJEJ, from aboard the last trolley between Frederick and Thurmont, which is one of the QR codes in our museum exhibit. You can actually listen to that full 18-minute broadcast that he put out the next day.

Rueben Moss:

But he kept his love of trolleys and, as he grew more famous, 10 years after the broadcast from the last trolley he had gotten a job as a DJ in Washington DC where he threw a connection with a flight attendant, managed to get a hold of an English copy of a record from a band that nobody had heard of or to get a hold of an English copy of a record from a band that nobody had heard of or was starting to hear of, known as the Beatles, and played one of their songs on his radio broadcast a little bit before the Sullivan show release. So originally the Beatles studio was very angry with him. People weren't supposed to hear the Beatles yet. It wasosed to be this big Ed Sullivan release and suddenly the DC area had heard them and so he was going to get in trouble for it. And then they realized his broadcast had actually made the Beatles suddenly popular and it helped grow the local interest. So instead of getting in trouble, when the Fab Four came and started their American tour after the Sullivan show, he got to be the first radio DJ to interview them live on the air in the United States right before their concert in DC.

Rueben Moss:

But all this time he was collecting trolley things still. So he was still interested in the Hagerstown and Frederick Living in Silver Springs. He was also interested in the DC and the Baltimore trolleys, got this collection together and in his later years after he retired, he started putting together local broadcast documentaries. He had a slideshow that you could buy a copy of the slideshow and have it shipped to you anywhere in the country and you could show it to your railroad club with his narration. Eventually he turned that into a documentary in 1994, made it commercially available and unfortunately passed away three years later. But it's the only documentary about the trolley system. Made it commercially available and unfortunately passed away three years later, but it's the only documentary about the trolley system and it introduced a whole new generation to the history of the trolley in conjunction with the Trolley Festival that started that same year.

Rueben Moss:

So he and Donald Easterday, I feel, are significantly responsible for the reason so many people still know about the trolley line. So after he passed away, not much was known about what happened to his collection and so a couple of years ago found an item on eBay that just looked a little interesting, contacted the seller, found out that it was from his collection and his widow, who had remarried since, wasn't sure what to do with other items, and so we ended up buying that item, or one of our supporters bought the item and donated it to us and a lot of the other things from his collection she donated to us directly and they make up a number of the items in the museum now, as well as quite a number of items in the archives, including the book, and among them were some items from Trolley 172, which he even says in the documentary was his favorite trolley. We have an original bell and an original whistle on display, but the big piece is the largest surviving piece and that is one of the original doors. We have it displayed so that we can demonstrate its accordion-like opening and closing function. I love the fact that we have it and the book because they're kind of bookend pieces. The book talks about the start of the trolley line, but the door is the end.

Rueben Moss:

This was the door that so many passengers climbed aboard the trolley and then climbed off through on the last trip. It was the last trolley that they bought new. It was the most powerful trolley they had ever operated and it just was something people use day in and day out. It's got a brass handle that was used as kind of the stair rail and you can see just how polished it is. We haven't polished it. That's from all the people using it year after year to climb up the steps onto the trolley and you can see that or you can demonstrate it. Let kids pull on the handle to see how it latches. It's just a piece of the trolley that you see in so many photos and has such a significant part on several of the lines.

Rueben Moss:

Well, it's perfect because you have kind of the initial, the beginning and then the end, yeah, the bookend, and if you would like to see the kind of the initial, the beginning and then the end yeah, the bookend items, and if you would like to see the rest of the story in the middle, then you should definitely come to the museum. Absolutely. There are quite a number of exhibits, a lot of photos, dioramas, maps, a number of artifacts.

Ayla Sparks:

While you're in there, you can actually hear.

Rueben Moss:

You can hear audio recordings of the trolleys as they were operating in the 1950s. There was a gentleman from Wisconsin that came and spent some time recording several of the trolleys, and so we have those records playing in the background. I'm actually going to be working on an edit of it where it's not the original clips because it has some horns that were added later after Boonesboro service. So you'll have the original recordings, but it will be put together in such a way that it's as if you were listening to the trolleys as they're coming and going outside. So for now we're just playing the records as is. Eventually that will change a little bit.

Rueben Moss:

But, it'll still be the original sounds.

Ayla Sparks:

Well, it's very exciting.

Rueben Moss:

You guys have a lot of good things and if you come visit this one, in the very, very near future, right next door is going to be the National Road Museum, which I'm involved with that as well. So it's exciting that two stories really mesh together and it's exciting to have two museums that have such an interesting and important impact on transportation, both locally and telling the story of similar companies and roads and railroads throughout the country, all as kind of a cross-section here in the middle of Maryland.

Ayla Sparks:

Middle of Boonesboro.

Rueben Moss:

Middle of Boonesboro.

Ayla Sparks:

Well, thank you so much for sharing with us all the information about trolleys. Who knew I didn't?

Rueben Moss:

Yeah, there is so much more in transportation history than people realize and it impacted life for so many people more than anyone can imagine. We take transportation for granted now, but it is a drastic part of our development.

Ayla Sparks:

As a culture. Economic growth yes, and as a culture. Yeah Well, thank you so much Thank you.

Ayla Sparks:

Thank you so much for tuning in and supporting Curator's Choice, a Mighty Oak Media production. If you enjoyed the show, please consider subscribing and rating the show on Apple Podcasts, spotify, youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If you love a museum and would like to hear it featured in an episode, shoot me a message at Curatorchoicepodcast at gmailcom. I'll do my best to reach out and see if I can get them to be on the show. You can also view articles, artifacts and more by following us on Facebook and Instagram. Thanks for listening to Curator's Choice, a podcast for history nerds and museum lovers.