Posted 7 months ago
spacemissing
(28 items)
This was one of my mom's favourite small things,
inherited from a relative, probably a grandparent.
It was for the Oakland, Brooklyn, & Fruitvale line
on the east side of San Francisco Bay.
Trolley token, dated 1871 | ||
| Trolleys and Streetcars1 of 32 |  |  |
I wonder what the fare was probably a penny
spacemissing, Very cool.
It wasn't until I opened the post and saw the picture of the other side of the token that I realized it was a horse-drawn trolley (I probably should have guessed that based on the date).
This wiki gives quite a bit of detail about the line (I'm using a tinyurl link in case the CW S&T software doesn't like the localwiki dot org link "https://localwiki.org/oakland/Oakland%2C_Brooklyn_and_Fruitvale_Railroad")
https://tinyurl.com/522r49dd
You can't make that map in the wiki work in Google Maps, because street names and routes have changed since 1871. Imagine, huh? };-)
Interesting..its horse drawn trolley on railroad tracks. And 10 cents, way more than I had thought.
dav2no1, It was probably relatively expensive, because it was strenuous work for the horses, and any given horse couldn't do it all day long, so you had to have a lot of 'spares.'
Before I used the name of the trolley line as search criteria (which led me right to that great wiki), I used "horse car," and went down a great rabbit hole:
https://www.cable-car-guy.com/html/cchorse.html
A couple of tidbits therefrom:
*snip*
The first street railway in the world was the New York and Harlem, incorporated 1831. The first cars were run in November, 1832 from Prince street to Harlem Bridge. These cars were curious structures, from the point of view of people of this generation -- being very much like the stage coaches of the time, each having three compartments with side doors; there were leather springs, and the driver sat on an elevated seat in front, and moved the brake with his foot.
*snip*
*snip*
The fares were paid in silver sixpences of the old Spanish currency then in circulation.
*snip*
So, six cents in Spanish currency, thank you very much -- in 1832 New York City. Wut?
When they wrote "leather springs," I imagine they were referring to the kind of suspension system they had in the stagecoaches used by Wells Fargo:
*snip*
The curved hardwood side panels on each coach added extra strength, and each coach body rested on a unique suspension system of leather straps called “thorough braces” that cushioned the ride in a rocking — rather than bouncing — motion. Author Mark Twain compared the ride in a Concord Coach to riding in “a cradle on wheels.”
*snip*
https://history.wf.com/in-1868-this-was-a-sight-never-before-seen/
Despite Mark Twain's endorsement of the comfort, I recall reading somewhere else quite some time back when I was researching stagecoaches that the leather suspension system wasn't designed with the comfort of the passengers in mind, but rather the welfare of the draught animals (and ultimately the safety of the humans onboard).
You didn't want to risk having your draught animals injured by metal hardware.
Ugh. Bad editing caused my snips to end up in the wrong places, but you get my drift. };-)
A'ight, here is a description of the leather suspension system in the Concord coach:
*snip*
These masterpieces of construction had no equal. Concord stage were first to offer shock-absorbing thorough braces—an important feature not just for passengers, but for the animals pulling them, too. These braces allowed the coach to rock back and forth and swing sideways, too, providing forward momentum for the teams.
Thorough braces were strips of leather cured to the toughness of steel and strung in pairs to support the body of the coach and enable it to swing back and forth. This cradle-like motion absorbed the shocks of the road and spared the horses as well as the passengers. It also permitted the coach to work up its own assisting momentum when it was mired in a slough of bad road…These thorough braces were carefully wrought and intricate in arrangement, and it usually required the hides of more than a dozen oxen to supply enough of them for a single coach.
*snip*
https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=25449
No guarantees that the "leather springs" in the New York and Harlem rail horse cars were as sophisticated as the ones in the Concord coach; however, Abbott-Downing apparently did make street horse cars (tiny url link forhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbot-Downing_Company):
*snip*
Abbot-Downing made coaches and large passenger vehicles of all kinds, including horse-drawn streetcars.
*snip*
https://tinyurl.com/y75tvyxb