Posted January 20, 201015 yr Trolleyville, USA About 1990 All Photos Copyright © 2010 by Robert E Pence These photos once were lost, but now they're found! Gerald E. Brookins was involved in the mobile home business and owned Columbia Mobile Home Park at 7100 Columbia Road in Omsted Township. He was interested in streetcars, and in 1954 he started collecting them and moving them to a site near the mobile home park. He constructed a 3 1/2 mile loop from a shopping center through the mobile home park. Brookins died in 1983 and his son, Mark, became the owner of Trolleyville. In 2001 the Brookins family sold the property and the terms of the sale allowed five years to remove Trolleyville. A new entity, Lakeshore Electric Railway, moved the cars to storage on Cleveland's waterfront with visions of creating an operating museum. That fell through, and in 2009 the collection was sold at auction. One of the earliest types of of electric streetcar, single-truck car 19 sometimes was known as a Birney. Its short wheelbase and only two axles/four wheels gave it a yawing, bobbing ride on anything less than manicured track, and city street rail generally was not manicured. It's the "Toonerville Trolley" of cartoon fame. The car behind it looks like a Cleveland center-door car, but I don't recognize the paint scheme. If I remember correctly, the depot came from Berea. I don't know what became of it when Trolleyville vacated the premises. 1225 is a big Cleveland center-door car. 451 is a Chicago Aurora & Elgin car. It's all steel, heavy, and fast. 303 is a wood-bodied interurban car. Cars of this type typically operated about 40mph on the open road. That sounds slow by today's standards, but in a era when most vehicles still were pulled by horses and few automobiles could sustain 30mph for any distance, 40mph was blazing fast. An interurban wreck with wood cars was a terrifying thing; the heavy steel frames, trucks, and drive motors could turn the carbodies into a mangling storm of splintered wood and shattered plate glass in an instant.
January 20, 201015 yr Neat! "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
January 20, 201015 yr Thanks! "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
January 20, 201015 yr Too late to visit- read the introduction to the thread. Thanks for the pics, Rob!
January 20, 201015 yr I'll have to visit sometime. Too late to visit- read the introduction to the thread. The best operating streetcar museum near Ohio is the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in Washington, PA, just south of Pittsburgh. While you're in the vicinity, drive on over to the village of Library and ride the PAT light rail into Pittsburgh, explore the downtown, and ride the Mon and Duquesne Inclines. Golly. Since you've come this far, you might as well get a hotel room for the night and then head for Orbisonia and the East Broad Top Railroad and Rockhill Trolley Museum. Heck, while you've already driven halfway across the state, you shouldn't miss Strasburg Railroad and the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. By now, you're too close to Steamtown and Electric City Trolley Museum at Scranton (sorry, no links) to pass them up. Before you start the trip, maybe you should just get a big Ryder truck and load all your stuff; after you've driven the backroads and byways across Pennsylvania, you probably won't want to go back to the Western Ohio's flatlands. :wink:
January 20, 201015 yr Hey Rob, that sounds like an awesome trip. I live in Pennsylvania and only have to just one of those places you mentioned. I loved the museum at Strasburg and I might be going down to Orbisonia sometime soon. Trolleyville USA looked like a really fun place. It's a shame it went under. I hope those gorgeous trolleys and streetcars are in good hands.
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