I need to check out the Shore Line Trolley Museum:

http://untappedcities.com/2016/06/21/th ... the-world/

http://untappedcities.com/2016/06/07/tr ... e-mineola/

I do as well. They were awarded an Achievement Award at the Association of Tourist Railroads and Railway Museums for the raising of the car barns.

They are a fine museum; the second oldest of their kind.

The Journal article is full of maybes; early horse cars are very difficult to research because of a lack of primary data about the John Stephenson Company.

The Illinois Railway Museum also has an ancient horse car from the same era and builder; also perhaps from 1959 or 1860. their car is the North Chicago Street Railroad #8.

Amateur historian Robert Reich has compiled a list of horse cars; it is available from the store at the Seashore Trolley Museum if you want to know more about early public transit.

Ted Miles

The horsecar at IRM is definitely newer than the one at Branford by a couple of years; the Chicago car is alleged to date to 1859 while Branford's new acquisition dates to about 1857. IRM's is also of a much more modern design (other than a Bombay roof its overall construction is largely the same as cars built thirty years later) than the car at Branford, which resembles a stagecoach. Perhaps most importantly, IRM's car was "restored" in the 1930s and it's unknown exactly how much of it is original, while the one at Branford is almost entirely original - and the parts that aren't original to its revenue service days mostly date to a restoration done in the 1890s!

I think the only competitor to Branford's car in age is a very similar car at the Harold Warp Pioneer Village in Minden, Nebraska of all places. I know less about that car except that it closely resembles Branford's car and it too is largely original.

Thank you for posting these links. I had known that horse car no. 76 was previously held by the Museum of the City of New York, but it had somehow escaped my attention until now that the car had been moved to Branford. It sounds like it's found a good home.

But how high is the roof of the car that it wasn't able to fit in the NY Transit Museum? Considering that the Transit Museum has displayed LIRR cabin car C-60 underground, I'm surprised that the horse car would be too big even with the Bombay roof and railing.

The direct connection between the IRT subway and LIRR that was utilized by the Mineola is long gone, but the two are separated by just the width of a single platform at the Atlantic Terminal (Flatbush Avenue) station in Brooklyn, and there are still track connections between the NY subway and the national network at two other locations in Brooklyn that I believe have been used for the delivery of MOW materials and (formerly) new equipment.

-Philip Marshall

I am the editor of Branford's newsletter, The Branford Electric Railway Journal and did
the research when the car came to our collection at the end of 2014.

The cited article on untappedcities.com has numerous errors which is unfortunately what
tends to happen when non-technical writers working for media with a broad, popular audience
try to summarize a densely factual or technical piece. A 5-page article is reduced to a few
paragraphs and invariably things get mangled, either because of carelessness or a desire to
"keep it simple." E.g. the photo caption attributed to "Larry" O'King... I'm looking right at my
original article where this famous railfan author and photographer's name is correctly spelled
(Leroy).

The author of this online article "quotes" my article:

As the Branford Electric Railway Journal article writes, “The Second Avenue Railroad wound up with this car, which Stephenson claimed was used on Sixth Avenue, and is lettered for Eighth Avenue!”

Except that is not what it said! Here is the actual passage:

Regardless, the Second Avenue Railroad wound up with this car, which Stephenson claimed he developed for the Third Avenue, other evidence suggests was used on Sixth Avenue, and is lettered for Eighth Avenue!

Can you spot the important difference?


In my research I read a translation of a German work dated 1862 but based on observations of
American railroads made during an April 1859 trip. In it, the authors (Henz & Bendel) describe
exactly the type of car that we have, stating that they observed it on the Sixth Ave RR only.
John Stephenson, the builder and inventor of this type of horsecar, stated many years later
that "ca 1855" he built these cars for Third Ave. Based on other records, I believe this to be
an erroneous recollection, as Stephenson was known for in many of his late-in-life interviews.
I believe that the car was unique in Manhattan to Sixth Ave.

The Museum of the City of New York used an 1855 date in its catalog record for the car, but did
not have a record (that they could find) of how that was determined. When the car was displayed
in a parade (by this time owned by Second Ave RR Co.) the sign said it was from 1853, but that
seems like a convenient stretch, since it was the year that Second Ave began running, and was
also a nice round 70 years earlier.

The most definitive source is the minute books of the Board of Directors of the Sixth Ave RR
which strongly suggest that this class of one-horse car was purchased in a quantity of 9 in
late 1856, 9 in 1857, 5 in 1858. Furthermore, the implication is that 2 cars may have been
present earlier in 1856, or even earlier, perhaps 1855 as Stephenson suggested. These
may have been demonstrators.

Since there are no roster data surviving, and 76 is almost certainly not the original number, I have no
way of knowing for sure which of these 25 cars our car is. I therefore concluded that the most likely
in-service date of our car is 1855-1857 with an upper bound of 1858. It is therefore positively
the oldest preserved streetcar.

Regarding clearances in the NYTM, I'm not the expert on that. My recollection is that it would not
clear if displayed with its wheels at the height of the station platform downstairs, nor in the upstairs
level. This is the natural way to display a streetcar, i.e. with the observer standing at "street" level.

Folks,
with this talk of the oldest horse cars; let us not forget an even older type of public transport the omnibus.

The Henry ford Museum has one that operated in hotel service at Monterey, California until 1905. A picture is on their web site.

And the Seashore Trolley Museum has a couple of them from Boston. Now surprisingly they are the oldest vehicles in their collection.

ted66