  Supersport Member Username: Supersport Post Number: 11748 Registered: 10-2003 |
I happened to be up at Selfridge ANG yesterday and noticed that they have one of the old Detroit Street Railway trolley cars up there sitting on the tracks. Does anybody know anything about this particular trolley? It was a very rounded/aerodynamic model, so I assume it was one of the last models that saw duty. Just curious as to what the story is on it. | ||
Thoswolfe Member Username: Thoswolfe Post Number: 14 Registered: 11-2007 |
DSR probably saved the cost of tariffs. Most of the DSR streetcars went to Mexico City, many are still in use there. | ||
Detroitplanner Member Username: Detroitplanner Post Number: 1532 Registered: 04-2006 |
the Michigan Railroad museum is there, next time stop by and learn something. | ||
Busterwmu Member Username: Busterwmu Post Number: 421 Registered: 09-2004 |
The Streetcar Supersport saw is part of the collection of the Michigan Transit Museum, which is based on or beside the Selfridge property. Tis DSR PCC car #268. It was one of the several dozen which went to Mexico City till the 1990s, then the MTM purchased it and brought it back to Michigan. As a side note, the MUNI system of streetcars in San Franscico has a tradition of painting their various PCCs in the color schemes of other famous systems now gone around the country. Guess what their latest repaint is? Detroit's DSR red and creme scheme! Here is a link: http://world.nycsubway.org/per l/show?73868 Looks pretty good! Here are a few other DetroitYes DSR thread links for anyone interested. Part 1: https://www.atdetroit.net/forum/mes sages/6790/63967.html?11344285 67 Part 2: https://www.atdetroit.net/forum/mes sages/6790/63968.html?11365740 86 Part 3: https://www.atdetroit.net/forum/mes sages/6790/60222.html https://www.atdetroit.net/forum/mes sages/91697/104463.html There are some great photos, and lots of stories and memories in those threads. Hope they help! | ||
Living_in_the_d Member Username: Living_in_the_d Post Number: 23 Registered: 01-2008 |
Yeah, hopefully the clearing of the dequindre cut will result in some sort of light rail such as these. Their route would be from the river, thru Eastern Market up to the milwaukee G.T. juntion. | ||
Jjaba Member Username: Jjaba Post Number: 6052 Registered: 11-2003 |
The collection of streetcars on the Market Street line in SF is amazing. They have domestic and international rolling stock and the motormen are very fussy how you treat them. No eating for example. Don't leave any garbage on them. They run along Market St. from The Castro all the way to Fisherman's Wharf. They take their time, so plan a long adventure. Several cars are PCCs (from 1950s) of the St. Louis Car Company and were used in Kansas City, Detroit, elsewhere. jjaba rode on one old timer used in Italy, not a PCC. Another rolling museum is Hiroshima, Japan. They decided not to remove the old cars and run a system which is pre-World War II. This is an amazing feat given that the city was bombed into oblivion in 1945. These cars came from another Japanese city, mostly. jjaba, on the Oakman. | ||
Douglasm Member Username: Douglasm Post Number: 1010 Registered: 10-2003 |
In case anyone's wondering, the term PCC comes from the Electric Railways President's Conference Committee, which designed the car in the mid 30's as a way for trolley and interurban lines to fight the competetion from the automobile. | ||
Mdoyle Member Username: Mdoyle Post Number: 327 Registered: 10-2006 |
That sanfran repaint is great. They even have the DSR logo. Ive long been looking for a high res image of the DSR logo. I should probably just go out to selfrige and snap one. | ||
Focusonthed Member Username: Focusonthed Post Number: 1657 Registered: 02-2006 |
quote: The rails are gone. This is going to be a linear park/trail of some sort. | ||
Mdoyle Member Username: Mdoyle Post Number: 328 Registered: 10-2006 |
Focus. One half of the trail is being left open for future use as a possible light rail line. | ||
Living_in_the_d Member Username: Living_in_the_d Post Number: 24 Registered: 01-2008 |
Yeah, Thanks M, I feel better now. | ||
The_rock Member Username: The_rock Post Number: 2118 Registered: 11-2003 |
Old-timers have fond memories of the DSR. A close friend of mine grew up in different orphanages, one of which was on Trumbull Avenue. Every other Sunday morning, he and a chum would sneak out of the orphanage, and "borrow" a few copies of the Detroit Free Press which back then were placed in open boxes hung on telephone poles. They would wait for the local DSR, hop aboard, and tell the conductor they were just hawking a few Freeps. So he let them on, they would sell the papers for a nickel each, hop off at the next stop, and they then had a few dollars that might last for the coming week. "Couldn't a done it with out the good ole DSR". (Name withheld at the request of the newsboy) | ||
Jjaba Member Username: Jjaba Post Number: 6058 Registered: 11-2003 |
Rock descibes a tough way to steal. If you pull that schitt with jjaba or his Westside boys like Ray1936, you might be sorry you ever tried. According to street ethics, stealing from the DSR might be different. But stealing from another newsboy? You gotta be kidding me. Friend, hell, jjaba bets he was your legal partner downtown. The Rock didn't care, he delivered the Shopping News, the ones they dumped by the bundle at Fishman's Waste Paper on Grand River Ave. That's how The Rock made his extra money. jjaba, Old Timey Newsboy. | ||
Ray1936 Member Username: Ray1936 Post Number: 2653 Registered: 01-2005 |
Well, the theft was The Free Press. That's only a step above The Shopping News anyway, so I can't really get in a snit about it. Had the Times been lifted, well, that would have brought in the Feds and all kind of trouble for them young'uns. | ||
Goblue Member Username: Goblue Post Number: 1064 Registered: 03-2007 |
J: That doesn't exactly sound like "stealing"...more sort of like Robbin' Hood...the guy who put the papers in the box wasn't exactly another newsboy...to tell the truth it sounds like it could have been my father...he was in an orphanage somewhere downtown around 1915-1918...ran away when he was 14...in the Army when he was 16...don't know where he was for the two missing years...he never would talk about it...likely hawking newspapers on the DSR. | ||
Stinger4me Member Username: Stinger4me Post Number: 155 Registered: 08-2007 |
When I sold papers on a corner, the boxes were the responsibility of the delivery people who worked for the newspaper. If you had the boxes out there today they would last one day. | ||
The_rock Member Username: The_rock Post Number: 2123 Registered: 11-2003 |
My friend more than makes up for his orphanage antics, by sending the Goodfellows a sizeable Christmas check every year. He also tells me that they "borrowed" a few Baby Ruth's from the local Cunningham's and hawked a few of them, too. But we don't want to get jjaba all excited again,( I will send him a couple of tickets to see "Annie" at the Shubert Theater) so we won't go into further details on that escapade. | ||
Lghart Member Username: Lghart Post Number: 121 Registered: 03-2004 |
Living out here in Basel, Switzerland I love the tram system. They even have an old tram with a dinner service several times a month and can be rented for a moving party. http://www.bvb.ch/ef_danteschu ggi.htm http://world.nycsubway.org/per l/show?56011 This is my tram just outside my flat, about 50meters. I also have a house in Detroit in the Harbor Island area where I live part time, what was the closest line back in the day to that area? I assume it must have run down Jefferson and turned around somewhere near the GP border? What was the average walking time to get to a tram/trolley line in Detroit? Wish I had been alive to see the system in action, living over here it amazes me how short sighted we as Americans can be. One other note, just got back from my third trip to Moscow and the Metro system still is astounding and they are expanding as we speak. The Russians sure no how to massively move people around. | ||
Professorscott Member Username: Professorscott Post Number: 1071 Registered: 12-2006 |
Lghart, the Jefferson streetcar turned around at Wayburn Loop, right on the Detroit - Grosse Pointe Park border. It is still where the DDOT Jefferson Avenue bus turns around today. In the parts of Detroit that were constructed before, say, 1920, almost everyone was within a quarter mile of a streetcar line. Not quite everyone, but nearly so. The more important lines ran about once a minute. (Now, no bus runs more frequently than every 8 minutes.) The parts of Detroit constructed from 1920 on had a more suburban feel, some areas had buses instead of streetcars, the system was more sparse and if you wanted public transportation you might have to walk a half mile or even farther. "We Americans" have our sight back everywhere but Detroit; all over the country, cities large and small are reinvesting in public transportation. But not here. | ||
Jjaba Member Username: Jjaba Post Number: 6080 Registered: 11-2003 |
The Oregon Iron Company hopes to produce streetcars domestically. Seattle bought Czech rolling stock for the SLUT line. (South Lake Union Trolley.) Portland, Ore. has a single line which runs from NW Portland down to the new aerial tram connecting to the Medical Center up on Pill Hill. Tram built by Austrians, streetcars by Czechs. Describe any other new systems going in around USA. jjaba loves streetcars such as SF, Phila., Toronto. jjaba. | ||
Detourdetroit Member Username: Detourdetroit Post Number: 368 Registered: 10-2003 |
PCCs...aren't they cute! designed and built to last almost forever...detourdetroit worked on rehabbing several of the Cleveland models while riding out his job at the planning dept in NYC...the PCCs were fun to play with ...minimum moving parts...interchangeable components (some from the autos I'm told)...versatile and real performers too...incredible stopping and starting power and a top speed of 60+mph. A crazy dream I had once is Steve Ballmer wakes up one day... and gives $1 billion to Detroit just because...$500 million to reestablish a light rail line down Woodward with redesigned retro/future PCCs and $500 million for UofM/MSU/WSU extension program...free undergrad-PhDs for our best and brightest as long as they stay in Detroit to do their thing for 5 years after graduation... as they're thinking up the next big thing, they can travel between the MSU/UofM and WSU Detroit campuses on Detroit's coolest new product: streetcars of the 21st century...don't ask me how this idea came to be, but I thought Steve Ballmer would get a kick out of it and go down in the history books under more than just Microsoft if he did something like that. | ||
Paulmcall Member Username: Paulmcall Post Number: 595 Registered: 05-2004 |
Yea those Russians sure know how to move large groups of people out to Siberia. | ||
Mikeg Member Username: Mikeg Post Number: 1462 Registered: 12-2005 |
Typical amenities for those Russians still waiting for the Metro to expand to their area.  |
