From the website of the Shore Line Trolley Museum, Located in East Haven/Branford, Connecticut.

On December 5th, The Shore Line Trolley Museum, located in Branford/East Haven, Connecticut took delivery of the one of the most significant street railway vehicles in existence, Eighth Avenue Railway horsecar No. 76, an 1850's John Stephenson product used in New York City. This car is complete in every way, including the fare collection apparatus and has been in the collection of the Museum of the City of New York since 1932. It is an omnibus style car, operated by one man, with a reversible body. With the assistance of the good folks at the New York Transit Museum, MCNY has transferred title to the Shore Line Trolley Museum. Our thanks go to both of these fine organizations for allowing us to have what is believed to be the oldest remaining horsecar in the world. It joins a collection that has the world's oldest rapid transit car (1878), first commercially successful electric locomotive (1888), only private subway car, first PCC car, only surviving trolley rotary snow plow and much more.
Upon arrival, horsecar No. #76 was brought to the museum’s restoration and repair shop where it will be thoroughly inspected and documented before being moved to a flood-proof portion of the museum property. We welcome this addition to the collection and look forward to interpreting the story of the early horsecar days to our visitors in the future!
Go to the Shore Line's website for news and information on this great museum and for updates on this rare horsecar: http://shorelinetrolley.org/


Thanks!

Simply amazing! I had heard about this car years ago but never realized it was so early and so complete. Congratulations!

-Philip Marshall

Beautiful car! I have an 1882 Stephenson currently under restoration so I may be bugging you guy's for data, photos, etc.

Fantastic.

Question - has anybody operated a horse car with a carbon-based lifeform recently???

The Tramway Museum Society at Crich in Great Britain has used a horsecar in its collection on a fairly regular basis.

On the Isle of Man, the Douglas Borough Council still operates a 3'-gauge horsecar line using 21 cars. This is a seasonal operation during the tourist season.

Link here: Horse Trams
And here: The Douglas Bay Horse Tramway

Here's a link to a photo of an identical car in service. I think that the last digit of the number may have been retouched to a 6.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f0/4f/4b/f04f4b4e975f9568da2c892953a1a2f6--horse-drawn-a-more.jpg

Jimmy, what jogged your memory to revive a post from 11 years ago?

The photo above is staged. You can see the rail is laid temporarily on top of the paving blocks. There would never be 4 people sitting up in the drivers seat! Here is an clip from the BERA/SLTM Journal 2015-1 issue which gave a complete history of the car. This clip is discussing the photo in question:


The next surfacing of car 76 is in late 1897. The Street Railway Review, Dec 15, 1897, p. 820 depicts this car in an engraving. The text explains that the Fourth Avenue streetcar line was in the process of converting to electric conduit operation between Astor Place and Grand Central. A test run was conducted:

...the new electric cars were accompanied over the route by one of the horse cars used by the predecessors of the company in the early days. One of these vehicles, called by employees a "bone-shaker," was taken out of its quarters and driven by an employee who drove it nearly 40 years ago. Several members of the Board of Aldermen were guests, but before the trip was finished they had all the enthusiasm shaken out of them.

The New York Times, Nov 1, 1897 makes reference to a test trip with two electric cars, with company officials and aldermen aboard, but does not mention the horsecar. The S.R.R. engraving clearly shows the car number as 75. A photo which has been widely circulated since it appeared in the books Time of the Trolley (Middleton) and Buses, Trolleys & Trams (Dunbar) is apparently a photo of this same event, and the engraving most likely was taken from the photo. It is likely that the car number was copied incorrectly. Curiously, in the photo, some doctoring has taken place in the area of the car number, and also of the date on the wheels, which has been crudely made to read 1855. This is almost certainly a photo of our car 76, as a large chunk missing out of the wheel tread is in the exact same angular relation to the wheel casting date as it is on our car. Who took this photo originally, who altered it and why is yet another mystery. The image is credited to the collection of Leroy O. King Jr., who passed away in 2009, and of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania which has no additional information on it. At any rate, this 1897 photo is a staged one and from the text is is apparent that the car was long out of service and pulled out for this special occasion.