Nostalgia & History > El Reno "Heritage Express" streetcar after/before

In 2007, my wife and I did a cross-country motorhome trip. On the to-do list was see and ride "the only rail-based trolley ride in Oklahoma" in El Reno. In a photo album, I found a picture of this car's previous existence, as a third-rail powered suburban car on SEPTA's ex-Red-Arrow line to Norristown. El Reno is quite a town for transport historians: Historic Route 66 runs through downtown, and it was the western terminus of a Oklahoma Rys. suburban line that lasted into the 1940's and was famous for its motley assortment of second-hand trolley cars. Reportedly, the ORy depot survives in El Reno, but I couldn't find it. The Yukon depot, closer to Oklahoma City, still stands near today's Yukon's Best Railway Museum.

1) Rolling down the street like an interurban from 70 years ago, El Reno 145 is powered by a propane fueled GMC V-8 engine. It's a streetcar, but not a trolley.

2) SEPTA 165 on the Norristown line in the western suburbs of Philadelphia. For most of their service in the Philly area, they ran on third rail power, so except for a few years in the 1920's, it wasn't a trolley there, either.

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It's more of a trolley than those ridiculous rubber tired atrocities running all over the tourist traps and downtowns of America!
Gonut

Maybe if they'd dieselized electric trolleys in the 1940s-50s, the now priceless track/ROW would have survived...and such vehicles would still have been better than the @#@#%# busses that replaced the trolleys.

Gonut1 Wrote:
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> It's more of a trolley than those ridiculous
> rubber tired atrocities running all over the
> tourist traps and downtowns of America!
> Gonut
Having one, centered, headlight helps a lot.

Taking down the wire and running diesel-powered passenger cars (also known as "doodlebugs" in some areas) was tried in a few places, but I can't think of any that survived for more than a few years. Although General Motors gets a lot of the blame, one of the main reasons for abandoning electric railway systems was that when a company or agency went all-bus, they could lay off the track gang and overhead line crew--maintaining the right of way was now somebody else's job (city street dept., county bureau of roads, and/or state highway dept.) I could also add that "diverse" rosters such as Oklahoma Rys. and the Indiana RR system acquired were a delight for railfans but a royal pain to the shop forces that had to keep them running. A fleet of buses, all from the same builder, who can provide spare parts support, would look a lot more practical than an assortment of "orphan" streetcars or interurbans. (but it doesn't make abandonment any less of a mental trauma to those who grew up with the electric railways)

Another advantage of a bus system is route changes are easily made.