About a year ago I read a story how the Detroit Department of Transportation had preserved several streetcars and that they could be ridden ocasionally downtown. Several people I know in the suburbs have never heard about them. Does anyone know if they ever existed and if they still do exist?<br>



davelecount@juno.com

These are four or five former Portuguese, Swiss, and British narrow-guage 2-axle cars operating on about a mile of street and sidewalk trackage on Washington Boulevard and Jefferson Avenue. I saw one car operate briefly in May, but I get the feeling that operation is sporadic and limited to sone summer days. The cars are visible in a glass-walled carshop in the median of Washington Blvd.<p>-- Aarne Frobom<br>



froboma@mdot.state.mi.us

When I was researching the RyPN Brief on the Toronto PCCs, I got interested in the fate of this line. I knew it exisited, but hadn't heard anything about it in years. After a vigorous search, I dug up the pretty dispiriting Detroit News article linked below.<p>Detroit was a pioneer in the urban heritage streecar movement, but they seem to have long since lost focus on the project. Certainly the city does little to promote the line: in sharp contrast to Memphis, New Orleans, or San Jose, one can barely find metion of Detroit's heritage trolley on their tourism and convention promotion literature and web sites.<br>



eledbetter@rypn.org

Sorry, here's that link.



Detroit News link
eledbetter@rypn.org