Visit to Warehouse Point

We recently had a chance to visit the Connecticut Trolley Museum at Warehouse Point, north of Hartford. The centerpiece of the museum is the visitor's center, seen above, which houses a large number of cars on semi-permanent display, as well as other displays and a movie theater.

Let's look at just a few of the cars on display.   There are many more, most of which are outside.

This is car 1, built as 1299, a Cleveland center-entrance car, of the same type as our 1218.

This is the "Black Maria", a very early electric locomotive built by General Electric in 1894 for industrial use.  It's probably been heavily modified since, but is still quite interesting.

Springfield Railway #10, a 1901 product of Wason, is one of the oldest interurban cars in existence.  By the way, CTM has a large number of cars built by Wason, a carbuilder you never hear of in the Midwest.

Nicely done displays on how trolley poles work, and on methods of fare collection. 

This is one of the most interesting items, to me: the body of the Northern Ohio Traction & Light parlor-obs car Northern.  This was a Niles car, built in 1909.  The carbody was reduced to a decrepit shack, but it has undergone a significant amount of restoration, and looks much improved.   The restored sections are nicely arranged.

Well, if you get bored with looking at old trolley cars, we have some coloring books for you.

I like this little single-truck line car.   They don't get any more compact than this! 

We were short on time, and my wife wanted to go for a ride.  The next service car was Springfield Terminal #16, a 1926 Wason combine.  

Some of the original barns are spread out along the mainline.  I really don't know what's stored inside.

But it's a very pleasant ride.