Street railways were the backbone of local transportation throughout the United States until they were displaced by automobiles and busses after World War II in most cities. With increasing traffic congestion in major US cities, street railway systems are now making their comeback in many places. By contrast, in many other parts of the world, traction systems remain as the dominant form of local transportation. Traction vehicles are variously called streetcars, trolleys, trams, or more recently light rail vehicles. Each vehicle is independently powered by electric motors and they often run on city streets in addition to private rights-of-way and underground tunnels. Often, particularly outside of North America, both the cars and the tracks are very narrow in order to accommodate narrow streets in many older cities. Electric power is generally provided via overhead wires. A pole or a pantograph contacts the wire to provide power to the vehicles. The pole arrangement has a wheel that rides on the wire or a graphite contactor that slides on the wire. Such a pole is called a trolley pole, hence the name "trolley" for street railway vehicles. "Trolley" refers to an electric vehicle riding on steel rails - not to those tacky rubber-tired vehicles that some cities use for tourist purposes and which have a feeble resemblance to a true trolley car. Very early street railway vehicles operating on tracks were unpowered and were horse-drawn.

Our webmaster, Ken Humphreys, was formerly a motorman at Arden Trolley Museum (now the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum) near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and later at Charlotte Trolley in Charlotte, North Carolina. He also has traveled extensively worldwide taking photographs of railroads of all types including traction, funiculars, and cog railways. This page shows some of Ken's collection of traction photographs. Unlike photographing a train on a private right-of-way, street railway photography is more difficult because of contending with automobile traffic, pedestrians, and other obstacles. Compose a shot and inevitably a car or truck moves into the scene or the object of the photograph suddenly speeds up or moves. At other times, dense traffic forces a quick point-and-shoot exposure and a prayer that the camera has captured what was desired. Some shots were taken through the window of moving tour busses, further complicating the problem. For these reasons, not every photo is composed or exposed as well as might have been desired but they are the best of what was possible under the circumstances.

Here is Ken's collection of traction photos, plus some subway cars, some funiculars and a cog railway. Photos are listed by the name of the city where each piece of equipment originally operated. Some photos were contributed by others as indicated on the photos. For North Carolina systems, photos are rarely available. Alan Coleman has contributed some photos and postcards from his personal collection which show some scenes of trolley cars in North Carolina and elsewhere. The photos and cards are grouped by North Carolina systems, other US cities, and other countries. With the courtesy of the Charlotte Observer, historic photos of early Charlotte horse cars and trolleys and a photo of a Piedmont Northern car are also included.

Rights to all photos are reserved by the contributors. Photos may not be copied or used for any other purpose with the expressed written permission of the contributors.

Please note that all of these images are held in copyright. We do not have any problems with others downloading the images provided if it is for their personal display, or reference (noncommercial) use only. These images may not be used for commercial or web page publication without written permission.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to e-mail the P&WRR Webmaster.