I thought I'd make a post on Detroit's former vintage trolley line. Originally constructed as the Detroit Citizen's Railway, the 3/4 mile line was completed in 1976 as part of a way to revitalize a five-block section of Washington Boulevard, downtown Detroit's historic, upscale shopping avenue which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Along with the addition of the trolley, the street was also turned into a pedestrian mall. They line was extended by 1/4 a mile in 1980 so as to reach then recently-completed Renaissance Center. It was operated by the Detroit Department of Transportation in a sidewalk right-of-way.
The line include nine narrow-gauge trolleys, seven of which were imported from Lisbon, Portugal, one was a Swiss car, and the last a double-decker car from England. In all, the system cost $2.72 million to build. It posted a peak ridership year in 1979 with 75,000 passengers for that year, but by 1998 it only recorded a little over 3,000 riders. By 2001, there was only one car still in use, with it only operating once per hour.
The city announced in late October of 2003 that it'd be discontinuing the system to reopen (fully) traffic to Washington Boulevard, and sell off the cars. The trolley barn in Washington Boulevard was demolished in 2004. Apparently, some of the old railcars sit abandoned in one of DDOT's garages, and the ones sent to Seattle to be refurbished, were, but haven't made it back to the city. Actually, no one really knows where those ones are.
railwaypreservation.com
railwaypreservation.com
railwaypreservation.com
Deconstruction, originally announced under the guise of sending the cars for 'refurbishing' in Seattle. They never returned.
railwaypreservation.com
The reconstructed avenue the cars used to go down since the reconstruction:
wyliepoon
Boulevard on the right
radiospike photography
Threaded Mode