Social History: Excellent home footage of President Truman on his campaign train “whistle-stop”…
Rear of train and Sam Wah cafe during during Harry Truman’s Whistle Stop tour. Austin, Texas. – 1948
The “whistle-stop” tour has been a tradition in American politics since the mid-1800s. Politicians travelled the nation by train, stopping to speak to citizens from a platform at the back of their train car. On these tours, candidates spoke to people across the country.
Social History – Last Streetcar in Cleveland, Ohio.
Last run of the Clark Avenue Trolley – 1940s…
Cleveland Trolley Car 4068 at West 25th St. and Bridge Ave. in Cleveland, Ohio.
Like most large American cites, Cleveland, Ohio, USA, had a large network of streetcar lines in the first half of the 20th Century. The lines were operated by the Cleveland Railway, which was formed in 1910 with the merger of two companies.
The Cleveland Railway converted a few streetcar lines in the 1930s, but the onset of World War II stopped any further conversions.
Lake steamer SS GOODTIME docking in Cleveland. Passengers would borad the nearby streetcars. Now a memory.
In 1942, the Cleveland Transit System took over the operation of all streetcar, bus and trackless trolley lines from the Cleveland Railway. Following the war, CTS undertook a program of replacing all existing streetcar lines with either trackless trolleys or buses.
The last CTS streetcar ran on January 24, 1954 with a free ride celebration on the Madison line from Public Square to West 65th and Bridge.
