(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved. Contact us for information about using this image.
label levels:
The trolley car with the uniformed conductor and motorman belongs to the Connecticut Valley Street Railway Company, whose tracks ran from Greenfield to Northampton, Massachusetts, between 1901 and 1924. Farm regions that had never known railroad service suddenly discovered they might have the advantage of a car line. By 1904 the trolley-car corridor reached northward along the Connecticut River Valley, connecting nearly every major town. The cars offered fast, regular, cheap, silent, and safe (note the safety fender on the front) transport to the nation's rural population, the people of New England and the upper Midwest in particular. What happened to such a usable system? The automobile and the oil industry bought many of the lines and then put them out of business.