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    Nashville's Streetcars and Interurban Railways
    Nashville's Streetcars and Interurban Railways
    Nashville's Streetcars and Interurban Railways
    Ebook183 pages1 hour

    Nashville's Streetcars and Interurban Railways

    By Ralcon Wagner

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    About this ebook

    Nashville's 150-year public transportation heritage is a rich and colorful one that began in 1866 when two private companies, the McGavock and Mount Vernon Horse Railroad Company and the South Nashville Street Railroad Company, commenced operation. The first cars were mule powered. During the 1880s, as streetcar routes became longer and too strenuous for animal power, steam dummy lines were introduced. On April 30, 1889, Nashville became one of the earliest cities served by electric street railways, developing a 70-mile system by 1915. In addition to its advanced streetcar system, Nashville was also served by two interurban railway systems. Over time, improved roads and affordable cars caused ridership on public transportation to drop rapidly. By February 1941, buses had replaced the last of the city's aging streetcars. The traction era had come to an end.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateOct 3, 2016
    ISBN9781439657744
    Nashville's Streetcars and Interurban Railways
    Author

    Ralcon Wagner

    Ralcon Wagner has been an enthusiast and advocate of regional and public transportation all his life. During the past 25 years, he has written numerous articles about trains and mass transit for national publications and has ridden more than 20 light-rail and streetcar systems across the nation. As an avid historian, Wagner is also involved with preservation efforts in the Nashville area.

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      Book preview

      Nashville's Streetcars and Interurban Railways - Ralcon Wagner

      book!

      INTRODUCTION

      When attempting to sum up the 75 years of Nashville’s rich streetcar history in a few pages, it is difficult to know where to begin. To adequately cover the detailed history of the myriad of street railways incorporated to serve the city is not practical within these confines. What follows is a condensed version of a bigger story, illustrated using a compilation of rare photographs, many published here for the first time.

      Nashville, from its founding in 1779 through the early Victorian years, was small enough that citizens could easily walk any place they needed to go. If one was not affluent enough to own or hire horse transportation, walking on foot was the only alternative. This did not present a major problem while the young city was relatively compact. By the 1860s, with some 20,000 residents, Nashville had become large enough that some kind of public transportation facilities were being seriously contemplated. In 1865, with the Civil War over, the South had taken a tremendous pounding, but Nashville had grown explosively, not having been destroyed by war.

      On May 29, 1866, just a little over a year after Appomattox, Memphis, Tennessee, became the first city in the state to show off its initial horsecar line. Nashville, the state’s capital city, wasted no time in following suit. The South Nashville Street Railroad Company, the initial mule-powered streetcar line, opened on August 25, 1866. During the inaugural trip, members of the press and a number of street railway executives and other dignitaries in attendance were pleased with what they saw. The new route served the Fairfield section at Green and Decatur Streets, which served City Hospital and cemeteries in the vicinity. Less than three months later, Nashville’s second streetcar company, previously chartered in 1860, the McGavock & Mount Vernon Horse Railroad Company, made its debut on November 18, 1866. The company would ultimately become Nashville’s largest animal-powered street railway, serving north, south, and west neighborhoods.

      During this period in the late 19th century, the method by which streetcars were powered would change from animals to steam. Initially, Nashville’s streetcars were drawn by mules or horses, while three lines adopted steam dummy locomotives to haul their cars. A steam dummy line or dummy engine was a steam locomotive enclosed in a wooden structure made to resemble a passenger coach. Supposedly, these were less objectionable to skittish horses and pedestrians in an urban setting, despite their smoke and noise. The use of dummy locomotives allowed streetcars to travel longer distances faster than animal-powered cars. Nashville was served by three steam dummy lines. The first of these was the Overland Railway Company, chartered on March 11, 1887, to operate between downtown and Woodstock Park, south of town, later renamed Glendale Park. The city’s second steam dummy line and the fourth streetcar route to reach Edgefield (now known as East Nashville) was the Main Street & Lischey Avenue Street Railroad Company, opened in 1887. The third and final steam dummy undertaking was the Nashville & West Nashville Railroad Company. This line was to connect downtown with the city’s west side. Over the next 25 years, numerous other street railway companies were incorporated to provide service to various districts of the city.

      On April 30, 1889, the McGavock & Mount Vernon Horse Street Railroad became the first street railway in the city to convert to electric power, making Nashville one of the first cities in the country to introduce electricity for public transportation. There was great fanfare across Nashville when the Broad Street line to West Side Park commenced operation using the new and cleaner power. Soon, trolley wire was strung over all the street railway routes, and the mule-powered and dummy line streetcars across the city were quickly replaced with cars powered by electricity. In just a few years, all of the city’s streetcar systems were powered solely by this new technology. In early 1890, the newly created United Electric Railway purchased and combined many smaller street railways across Nashville, creating a 52-mile, 18-line system. Many smaller companies were absorbed by larger ones by the turn of the 20th century.

      Years later, another conglomerate, the Nashville Railway Company, was created for the sole purpose of totally combining all existing companies in the city. In 1903, a group of local investors purchased the firm, renaming it the Nashville Railway & Light Company. A year earlier, the new Nashville Transfer Station was constructed on the west side of the Public Square. The new facility included waiting rooms, public telephones, restrooms, and refreshment stands. With the unification of all the street railway companies, other improvements were made by the NR&L. In 1906, a new shop and carbarn complex were opened one block north of the Transfer Station. The sprawling complex contained 15 tracks and occupied half a city block. The progressive NR&L was now operating in the golden traction years, but the private automobile, with its offspring the motorbus and the new jitney craze that had enveloped the country, began to wreak havoc on the vested street railway concern. In addition to Nashville’s modern streetcar network, the city was also served by two interurban railway lines as well, the only city in Tennessee to have this distinction. The Nashville-Gallatin and Nashville-Franklin interurban lines ran in opposite directions. Both interurban railways utilized Nashville’s street railway system from the city limits to the downtown Transfer Station.

      For decades, the Nashville Railway & Light Company had a major presence in downtown Nashville. In addition to the Transfer Station, carbarns, and maintenance shops near the Public Square, the NR&L’s offices were housed on the first floor of the stately 1882 Watkins Institute Building on Church Street at Sixth Avenue. With its ornate

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