Nostalgia & History > More old Baltimore Transit Company Streetcar Scenes

Here is another story about our Baltimore Streetcars.  Prior to when the Baltimore Transit Company (BTC) was sold to the National City Lines Bus Company, the BTC had a number of streetcar lines that operated on private right-of-ways.  One of the best was the #26 line that originally operated from Downtown Baltimore, over through East Baltimore (Eastern Avenue) then down Dundalk Avenue and finally into Sparrows Point, which was where the Bethlehem Steel Company had their huge steel-making and shipbuilding facility.  The BTC operated the old "Semi-Convertible Cars" known as the "Red Rockets" usually as two car trains, especially during the busy morning and afternoon rush hours.  These trains actually operated on the private right-of-way alongside of Dundalk Avenue and they ran like trains with railroad signals and railroad crossing signs at all grade crossings.  Photo 1 shows a two car train in the original "Red Rocket" paint scheme, while photo 2 shows one of the cars at a passenger stop, now painted in the bus company yellow scheme.  In the later years of service, since the old semi-convertibles were basically worn out, especially having served well through the second world war, the old cars were replaced with the modern PCC cars.  Photo 3 shows two PCC cars on the line, but they were not hooked together as the transit company did not run them as trains.  These cars continued to run on that line until 1958 when the bus company converted the line to bus operations, another grave mistake as the bus operations was so much slower sharing the road with the other traffic.  Today, Dundalk Avenue basically looks the same and the original private right-of-way is still there in the center of the road, with grass and trees growing there.
John in White Marsh, Maryland

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Thanks John for your enjoyable streetcar pictures and interesting narrative.

Larry