There are also a number of “shell” companies that were formed. This timeline is a little simplistic since there were a number of mergers that eventually led to the Atlanta Consolidated system, which led to “The Second Battle of Atlanta”, where two great financial forces in the City fought it out for control. Atlanta & Edgewood Street Railroad Company (1886).Gate City Street Railroad Company (1881).West End & Atlanta Street Railroad (1872).These journals would report transit activities in Atlanta, but need to be considered with a minor degree of skepticism since they also reported on the hopes and dreams of various promoters. There was also significant help from the miracle of Google Books, a trove of old railway journals and the like. So, it was possible to search the manufactured car list for the various Atlanta car lines. Cox, of Virginia, compiled substantial information about streetcars manufactured by a variety of companies such as Cincinnati, Brill, Laconia and others. Much of my research on the Atlanta equipment rosters is sourced from the Martin books and the Carson book. This section of my blog will cover the equipment rosters of the individual companies that led up to the consolidation in the form of the Georgia Railway & Power Company. The Shoreline has his research materials, and perhaps, in due time, his efforts will see print.īut, for the moment, all you’ve got is me. Carson is retired and has moved to the Wine County of California to live with his daughter and granddaughter. Not to mention the time and energy needed for such a project. But there is the minor matter of his publisher, Interurban Press, going out of business.Īnd it is hard to get a train book published in the United States. And he has thoroughly researched the streetcar rosters of Atlanta, both the predecessor companies and Georgia Railway and Power’s (later Atlanta Transit). Gene Carson was responsible for the preservation of 948. This museum holds the one active Atlanta streetcar, No. Carson had been active for many years with the Shoreline Trolley Museum, located in Connecticut. He has thoroughly researched the various equipment rosters, but it’s like a lot of other things in life, things get done in their own time. I have my own theory as to why Jean Martin’s Mule to MARTA stopped dead in its tracks, but I did have an interesting telephone conversation with Mr. Things changed, and there was little or no need to save outdated records. Like other historical subjects, there often is no corporate sentimentality about preserving company records for the benefit of posterity. Not that there hasn’t been talk about it. While the carbarn itself still stands, who manufactured the streetcar, and how many of them were there? What is missing from the books and articles is a list of what equipment each of the individual systems used to transport passengers around Atlanta. A rare quantity for modernity-driven Atlanta. It is the Inman Park car barn of the A&E, and through the grace of God and the efforts of countless civic minded preservationists, it still stands. The electric trolley industry was born.īelow is probably the most popular image used to illustrate the early days of streetcars in Atlanta. The Atlanta and Edgewood Street Railroad first operated in 1889, three years after the formation of the company and one year after Richmond began operations. That was 1888, and as pointed out in the Wikipedia article about Sprague, there had been over 7o attempts at electric powered streetcars up to that point. The first successful electric powered streetcar line was Frank Sprague‘s Richmond, Virginia system. Steel wheel on steel rail was an established technology, thanks to the steam powered railroads, but the motive power was like most other vehicles on the streets in that era. At that point, circa 1870, that was all that they had available. Many of Atlanta’s early streetcar lines were operated with cars that were pulled by either horses or mules. While there has been coverage about Atlanta’s streetcar systems, there has been scant coverage as to the equipment which these systems used. This blog section is meant to serve as a supplemental reference for these books and webpages. And again the streetcar equipment roster remains unreported.Īdditionally, there are at least two web pages that also cover the subject of Atlanta streetcars: Carson and published by Interurban Press, this book also covers the Atlanta streetcar scene. There was supposed to have been a third volume which would have covered the equipment used by the various streetcar companies, but it never made it to print. Written by Jean Martin and published by the Atlanta Historical Society, these two volumes cover the transit scene in Atlanta. There are two definitive books about the Atlanta streetcar systems: