The Time of The Trolley – The Street Railway from Horsecar to Light Rail – 1887- 1987 Centennial of the Trolley Volume 1 is a reprint of the original edition. The book by William D. Middleton is about the time in America when if you went anywhere you took a trolley. That is because trolleys went everywhere. No industry played a more leading role in the development of the American city than did the street railway.

The practical electric streetcar came into being in 1887 in Richmond, Virginia. They replaced their predecessors, the horsecar, and the cable cars. The movement ballooned into a transit industry that was operating more than 60,000 trolleys over some 26,000 miles of street railway by World War I. Clanging, swaying, grinding along, the streetcar helped to create the modern city. They rolled two generations of Americans to work, to the suburbs, to the ball park, and out to the amusement park with its bright lights, Ferris wheels and roller coasters. They carried up to a billion people a year. This is the substance of William D. Middleton’s absorbing The Time of the Trolley.

The author talks about how the humble horsecar-initiated America’s adventure in rail transit. The then explores the inventive genius of Frank Sprague, who perfected the electric streetcar that was to dominate municipal transportation until the time of Henry Ford. Middleton mixes trolley technology with life aboard cars and brings the story up to the time of the new light rail systems of the 1980s. He also includes the trolley museums where the heritage of the past has been preserved.

The time of the trolley, originally published in 1967, is being published by Golden West Books in three volumes. The revised second edition Volume 2 – America in the Time of the Trolley will pictorially roam the Americas to view the trolley in all the variety of its urban and rural settings. Volume 3 Urban Rapid Transit Systems covered only briefly in the original book will become the subject of an entirely new volume.

If you are a history buff or railfan, you will want to add The Interurban Era to your library. This William D. Middleton authored several books about the interurbans and trolleys. A few of his books are on our website.