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DSR Streetcar memories - 1Hornwrecker50 12-12-05  6:02 pm
DSR Streetcar memories - 2Psip41 01-06-06  2:01 pm
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Hornwrecker
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Post Number: 675
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Posted From: 63.41.8.40
Posted on Friday, January 06, 2006 - 3:07 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I've been looking for another, the one you're referring to is much later showing the this part amalgamated into the Hudson's buiding. Strange that Sallan's would occupy a building with same footprint, just on the opposite side of the street and down a block only a decade later.
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Ndavies
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Posted on Friday, January 06, 2006 - 3:17 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Vancouver, BC still runs electric busses in sections of the city.
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Psip
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Posted on Friday, January 06, 2006 - 3:55 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Armistice Day Parade after WWI at Woodward and Gratiot.

Silks 1
WSU
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Hornwrecker
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Posted on Friday, January 06, 2006 - 11:36 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Found another double decker in this photo, taken somewhere on the North American continent during the past millennium, or hazarding a wild guess, on West Grand Blvd near 2nd during the 1920s.

WGB DSR double deck bus


WGB DSR double deck bus c/u
WSU/VMC
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Psip
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Posted on Sunday, January 08, 2006 - 5:13 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

A tragic accident in 1897 sent a Streetcar into the Clinton River in Mt. Clements.
River

CAr

(Message edited by Psip on January 08, 2006)
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Mikem
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Posted on Sunday, January 08, 2006 - 5:43 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Schramm says: "The Rapid's (Rapid Railway) bridge over the Clinton River, west of the Gratiot Road covered bridge (in photo), collapsed under the wheels of a small single-truck car in 1900. Many factors contributed to this catastrophe, including winter ice packs, an overloaded car, and the torque created by a car coming out of a sharp "S" curve at a high rate of speed."

He has two other pictures, one showing the rebuilt bridge being tested by running a heavy car over it, and another showing a second accident where: "In 1910 an overloaded express freight motor, possibly traveling too fast, caused the bridge to collapse again. On board was a corpse being shipped to Marine City."

I gave my scanner the day off.
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Psip
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Posted on Sunday, January 08, 2006 - 5:47 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

:-) thank again Mikem, I forgot to mention that photo is from U of M and has a date of 1897 on it.
Title 1897 Funeral car plunges into Clinton River at Mt. Clemens.
Source of Title Image
Date 1897
Photographer / Artist Henk Studio (Mount Clemens, Mich.)
Notes South Gratiot Ave. covered bridge in background
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Psip
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Posted on Sunday, January 08, 2006 - 10:13 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

From the Detroit News Rearview:
A unique trolley car was the DUR's funeral car, introduced in 1901. Detroit was one of a few cities to have such a car, and it was booked solid. It hauled anybody who had been anybody to the cemetery. The funeral car was black, with no name or number, and had an opening near the front to receive the casket. It stayed in service from 1901 to 1917. Each of the large cemeteries of the time maintained a loop of track to accommodate the car. The mourners rode right along with the corpse, coffin and family in front, guests in the rear.
So it apears the U of M is in error.
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Pam
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Posted on Monday, January 09, 2006 - 3:13 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I was reading this article and thought the street car buffs might be interested in the top picture. (Burning street car stop during 1943 riot)

http://info.detnews.com/histor y/story/index.cfm?id=185&categ ory=events
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Hornwrecker
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Posted on Friday, January 13, 2006 - 12:33 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I located a photo of Gratiot at Woodward from the turn of the century. It shows another, smaller building at the Northeast corner, and Hudson's occupying the building with the arch top windows down the block.

Gratiot and Woodward 1900s

Is that Crowleys in the distance on the right? I guess they added a couple of floors to the top of it.
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Aarne_frobom
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Posted on Friday, January 13, 2006 - 2:08 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Nice to see a photo of the L-shaped alley between Gratiot and Farmer Street when it was still an alley, before it was bridged over by the Hudson's building. I only remember this as the dark tunnel that separated the two parts of Hudson's first floor.

Below is an essay I wrote for the Michigan Transit Museum newsletter on the occasion of the demolition of the Hudson's building back in 1998, and its relevance to the DSR. It makes mention of the Woodward/Gratiot corner:


Trolley Cars and Concentration —
Reflections on the Demolition of Hudson’s, 1998

by Aarne H. Frobom, Jr.

At a flea market a while back, I came across an artist selling prints of his work on Michigan-history subjects. One of the pictures was a tempera painting of a Detroit Street Railways streetcar turning the corner on Gratiot Avenue in front of the J. L. Hudson Co. department store, on a quiet night in a snowstorm. I never saw a Detroit streetcar run, but I remember the red brick and dark-green ironwork of the Hudson’s building. The artist had captured that perfectly, so I bought a print, for reasons of nostalgia.

The demolition of the Hudson’s building several months later brought a wave of nostalgia statewide, and it made me reflect on the connection depicted in the painting between transit and the world’s biggest store. When the big store came down, reporters recalled events that symbolized the decline of Detroit retailing. Most reporters picked the opening of Hudson’s Northland in 1954 as the signal event — the nation’s first outlying shopping center. Others mentioned the riot of 1967, when the store was ringed with troops. Another key event was the opening of the John C. Lodge freeway in 1947. It’s probably not a coincidence that the nation’s first suburban mall lay along the Lodge/Northwestern Highway route — one of the first modern freeways and a model for what would later be bulldozed through cities nationwide.

Before the building was dynamited, newspapers printed old photos of Woodward Avenue, showing the world’s largest flag, or the huge crowds of people that seem unbelievable now. Some of those photos showed the streetcars, but none of the caption writers mentioned them, if they even knew what they were. In older photos of the fabulous Thanksgiving Day parade, the trolley line down Woodward is visible. In photos after 1956, the tracks are gone. But the vanishing cars had more than a little to do with the vanishing stores of downtown Detroit.

Most of the Hudson’s building dated to 1927. In that year, most households lacked a car, especially the hundreds of thousands of homes of factory workers in Detroit who still couldn’t afford to buy what they made. The confluence of trolley lines made the location at 1206 Woodward so valuable that it paid Hudson’s to buy and demolish a competitor’s relatively-new building at Woodward and Grand River to make room for their mammoth store. The store’s builders assumed that a significant fraction of Detroit’s two million people would come through its doors every day, and that they would bring lots of money, and come by streetcar. Their assumption was correct for over two decades. But by the early 1950's a wave of decentralization was under way. People had more money than ever, and they stopped riding streetcars.

It was no longer possible to attract the huge concentrations of people that the big store was designed to serve, and which it needed to survive. People weren’t riding transit anymore because they had cars, and you can’t assemble that many people in a city by car every day. And because they had cars, they had a choice. Even conversion of many of the city’s blocks to parking lots wasn’t enough. The cost of land showed up in parking charges. The cost in convenience was invisible, but it was even higher.

A lot was written about Hudsons’ fleet of delivery trucks, but no one speculated on why this fleet was necessary. Editors assumed the trucks were a gesture toward customer service, and a sign of modernism. The truck fleet may have been an aggressive, competitive use of automotive technology, but it may also have been a necessary adjunct to trolley travel. In the 1920's, Hudson’s customers mostly arrived by streetcar and bus, and there was a limit to how many of those dark-green bags and boxes you could carry onto a crowded streetcar through those folding doors while holding onto the kids. If a merchant wanted to get lots of big, expensive goods into the customer’s home, he had to help with transportation.

Of course, the auto-and-highway system that made the trucks possible also let customers do their own hauling. As soon as they had cars, customers found that they could carry anything smaller than a refrigerator directly from the store to their car trunks. As genteel as truck delivery was, it was slow and expensive. And any store that required a long, heavily-laden walk was at a disadvantage, especially through the snow that looked so quaint in my framed print. Hudson’s market researchers were among the first to detect this trend, and they began planning suburban branch stores after World War II. Trade began falling at the downtown store in 1953. By the time streetcar service ended outside 1206 Woodward, the company had successfully planned to follow the flow of trade away from its biggest store.

The rise and fall of the Hudson’s building is emblematic of the unique position of Detroit in urban history. Detroit was the most concentrated manufacturing machine on the planet. In the years between 1914 and the 1950's it was effectively one huge factory, which demanded vast flows of raw materials and huge contributions of labor. The materials were stacked in piles of ore, coke and fluxstone, and marshalled in railroad yards full of supplies and parts. The labor was housed in dense residential neighborhoods, often sorted by ethnicity — just another factor of production to be stockpiled. Detroit’s 1920's neighborhoods were spacious for their time, but still tight enough to be connected with the factories by trolley. And the workers’ families were served by a concentrated retail center that included the world’s largest store building.

The huge machine of Detroit was the biggest boomtown in history, but it was producing the means of its own demise. As soon as the automobile enabled people to spread out, they did, back to pre-industrial densities on an endless plain of suburbs that can never be connected by anything other than automobile roads. The shopping malls that mark this landscape are unimpressive when compared with the downtowns of the past. Some see that as decline or upheaval, but historians are coming to suspect that the concentrated industrial city was an aberration in human settlement patterns, a quirk of the years between 1870 and 1960, when the economics of production and transportation demanded that workers be warehoused like the parts they assembled.

The giant Hudson’s store was a product of transportation patterns of the 1920's. The concentration of almost any service you could want onto a little over two acres was a response to the inflexibility of transit routes. It came at a price. Many of the things that made the Hudson’s store so fabulous had to do with coping with the vertical architecture of the trolley-car city. The banks of dozens of elevators (with their human operators twisting trolley-like controllers) were part of the cost of verticality. So were the 42 escalators that ate up costly space. All that merchandise had to be muscled into and out of a crowded shopping district. This required big warehouses nearby, with still more elevators and space devoted to goods movement. Stock had to move at night, lest it conflict with the movement of people by day. The big store was an awesome solution to logistical problems that modern retailers will never face, who only have to move the goods in two dimensions and not three.

But along with the crowding and concentration, transit era cities produced some grand institutions that we will never see again. Hudson’s was one of them. The DSR was another. Even though the Hudson’s store closed in 1983 and was blown down in 1998, you could make a case that the plunger was really pushed in 1956, when the trolley line came up. It’s testimony to the strength of the institution that the store survived for 26 years after its circulation was cut off.
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Livernoisyard
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Posted on Saturday, January 14, 2006 - 5:29 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Just what is in that pile on the street in the last photo? Could that be where the pedestrians were stacked after being run down?
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Psip
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Posted on Saturday, January 14, 2006 - 4:03 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Livernois, it appears to be a pile of construction debris.
Also safety was a concern as seen in this demonstration of a "people catcher" You may have survived the impact, but being squired on the steel ends must have been painful.
Woodward State

Saftey

LOC
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Hornwrecker
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Posted From: 63.41.40.98
Posted on Saturday, January 14, 2006 - 5:25 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Psip, were you so impressed with the photo that I posted on Nov 23, that you had to post it again? :-) You missed one.

Here's another open top, double decker in GCP on a foggy day. Why does the Jefferson route to Water Works Park go through GCP?

DSR double deck bus in GCP
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Naturalsister
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Posted on Saturday, January 14, 2006 - 6:16 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

One of the best threads EVER. This is greatly informative as well as very entertaining. Thanks to all who contributed.

later - naturalsister
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Psip
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Posted on Sunday, January 15, 2006 - 3:54 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Aarne_frobom, while looking for some other information I stumbled across this photo of Woodward and Gratiot. Clearly showing the unexpanded Hudsons.

Hudson=Silk
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Oldmanjazz
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Posted on Sunday, January 15, 2006 - 11:47 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

To : aarne_frobom

...your description on the connection between the demise of streetcars and to downtown Hudson's demise is very convincing... a stroke of great insight, beautifully described and argued. Thank you.
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Hornwrecker
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Posted on Friday, January 20, 2006 - 12:07 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

It looks like the Dexter bus drivers were popular with the young ladies on the Westside, as appears in this photo of a double-decker DSR bus.

DSR Dexter Doubledecker

I wonder where a certain Westsider inherited his love of the Dexter bus from... but I don't want to speculate... too much.
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Hornwrecker
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Posted on Friday, January 27, 2006 - 1:10 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Two signs from the campaign to purchase the streetcar lines by the City of Detroit.




WSU
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Dag
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Posted on Friday, January 27, 2006 - 1:16 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

The campaign to purchase the streetcars was one of the primary impediments preventing Detroit from developing a true subway system. I honestly believe that if we did not have to purchase the streetcar lines in '21 and were able to proceed with our transit plan from '26 that we would now have subways throughout the city. It is impressive how the little things here and there add up to shape the current situation that we now reside in.
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Hornwrecker
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Posted on Saturday, January 28, 2006 - 11:41 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

For anyone interested in the subway, it was discussed some in a past thread. Lots of maps for freeways that were never built and some subway proposals.

Detroit Expressway Planning circa 1945
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Hornwrecker
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Posted on Saturday, February 04, 2006 - 2:21 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

A photo of women employees used on the streetcars during World War I.

Women employees, Streecars, WWI
WSU

(The streetcar in back had a Woodward sign, below it reads House.)
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Hornwrecker
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Posted on Friday, February 10, 2006 - 10:58 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Here's a link to a site with photos and roster of DSR electric buses:

http://www.trolleybuses.net/de t/det.htm

...and a link to some old photos and articles about DSR buses.

http://www.trolleybuses.net/ds rdot/dsrdot.htm
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Jjaba
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Posted on Saturday, February 11, 2006 - 1:55 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Thanks Hornwrecker. Amazing memories for jjaba there.

The electric feeder buses on Grand River Avenue have been mentoned before. When the buses crossed the Forest-Warren Crosstown line, sparks would fly and poles would pop off like champagne corks.
Here you are sitting dead in the water in the middle of this major city arterial in a packed out bus. The driver got out his gloves, put on his heavy coat, and walked backhere to re-install the lines. Dead in the water means no lights, no heater, nada, stuck.

Buses ran on 3 minute spacing with uniformed dispatchers timing them like time and motion study geeks on an assembly line. Sometimes he'd wave them over a stop to improve spacing. He could curse out an operator for running too hot, on the tail of another, or too slow, holding up traffic on the line. Dispatchers kept records to the half-minute.

The destinations were on the roll scroll telling passengers to wait for the correct one. Grand River-Telegraph, Grand River-Lahser, Grand River- Schaefer, Grand River-Southfield. The whole line for miles and miles professionally orchestrated with Detroit assembly line precision.

jjaba got off at Oakman Blvd. in front of Cunninghams to catch the Northlawn bus. If that bus wasn't running, he walked from Northlawn and Grand River to home.

jjaba, Westsider & Cass Tech. Grad, 1959.
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Panson
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Posted on Saturday, February 11, 2006 - 1:05 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I have a video called "Getting About" which is a Paramount News real / documentary type thing on the DSR with outstanding video of the daily operations of the street car and bus system in Detroit circa mid 1930's. Aside from the cool video of many streets and landmarks many of you would recognize, there's some pretty interesting facts on there including a quote about 1.2 million riders per day, and the fact that Detroit's street cars were the cheapest of any other system in the country other than New York, but NY's system was heavily burdened with a lot of debt.

Anyway, I did a search and came up with this...

http://www.thconline.com/eartr olcarco.html

This isn't the same video I have, but does appear to have the same "Getting About" documentary on it. If you're a steet car fan, I'd recommend it. ...or just ask if you can borrow mine next time you see me at the bar.
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Hornwrecker
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Posted on Thursday, February 23, 2006 - 1:10 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Rush hour.



Actually the aftermath from some parade, or a famous visitor on the streetcar.
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Hornwrecker
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Posted on Thursday, March 02, 2006 - 11:59 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Grab your stereoscopes kids, here's an oldie from the NYPL, horse trolley in front of the old Detroit City Hall.

Stereo view of horse trolley Detroit City Hall

Next I'll be raiding View-Master slides.
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Jjaba
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Posted on Thursday, March 02, 2006 - 2:29 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Hornwrecker, your "rush hour" photo makes tame those Super Bowl crowds, eh.

jjaba doesn't think the younger Detroiters understand what a huge, dynamic downtown Detroit has been. Today, you can alomst go bowling on Woodward Avenue by comparison.

jjaba, Westsider on the Oakman Streetcar inbound to Manchester Yards in Highland Park for the change to the Woodward PCC cars. (1947)
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Rms
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Posted on Thursday, March 02, 2006 - 5:51 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

OK, someone who is an Eastsider expert. I have a question about a largely Italian neighborhood that was up Gratiot. A guy that grew up in that area told me a story about how the old native Italians couldn't say "where the street car makes the loop". When referring to this area they would say "car loop", but it came out more like garolupe. Not sure of the spelling. The area came to be called Garolupe....like Greektown, Bricktown, etc. How is this actually spelled? What streets defined this area? And are there any pictures? The post about the Wayburn loop on the first 50 posts in this thread got me thinking about that. Was this ever an official name that got adopted, or just used informally by the residents? I don't recall seeing it on maps.
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Hornwrecker
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Posted on Monday, March 06, 2006 - 5:00 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I don't have a copy of the two volume DSR books yet, so I can't answer you question. Still looking for an affordable set.

Here is a view of the Manchester car yards from the book, The Legacy of Albert Kahn, by W. Hawkins Ferry, WSU Press. The topic came up on a thread about what was happening with the old Sears site in HP.

DSR Manchester yards
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Danjo444
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Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 - 11:04 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

There is a slide-show program tonight at the GP War Memorial about the DSR street cars. Author Ken Schramm, who wrote a book on the subject, will show slide and give a talk. 7:30 p.m. and it's free. I understand he will emphasize the tracks through the east side and pointes.
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Danjo444
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Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 - 1:37 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Anyone interested in the History of the DSR streetcars in Detroit and surrounding areas may be interested to know that Author Ken Schramm will give a slide show and talk on the subject this Sunday, March 25, 2 p.m. at Assumption Grotto church at the corner of 6 Mile and Gratiot. Addresss: 13770 Gratiot Ave
Detroit, MI 48205(313) 372-0762. It's free. His lecture is in the adjacent school building. Great old photos, great Detroit History.
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Hawthorne
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Posted on Monday, June 18, 2007 - 11:40 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

My mother used to ride the Imperial Express from 7 Mile and Greenfield downtown in the mid-60s. The fare was 35 cents and the bus skipped many of the local stops in order to get downtown in less than an hour most days. On a rare day off from school, she let my brother and I ride with her one day and we spent a couple hours at the Money Museum on the Mezzanine of the National Bank of Detroit building on Woodward.
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Stinger4me
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Posted on Monday, August 27, 2007 - 6:17 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

The Woodward Line running in the middle of the median between McNichols and the Fairgrounds. The cars had a turn-around at the fairgrounds before heading south towards the river. The Baker line may have been one of the longest. It went from Nevada and Van Dyke all the way to Campus Martius and part of the line was through the middle of Hamtramck.
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Busterwmu
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Posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 9:44 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I recently came across some excellent DSR streetcar photos in a few old Michigan Railroad Club calenders. These are views I have not seen before online or in any other DSR books. I've got a few of them scanned already, the others will be coming soon. Hopefully they will spur some continuing DSR streetcar discussion, memories, and the like. I will add the caption detail as copied from the Calender, the photographer, and the month/year it was found in each calender. Hope you enjoy!


235 far

From Michigan Rails '93, Back cover. Howard S. Babcock photo - collection of Richard R. Andrews.
On August 16, 1953, it was business as usual for City of Detroit DSR PCC 235 assigned to Woodward line service. The view here is looking north as the four-year old PCC turns off Woodward Avenue onto Woodbridge Street to loop around for another trip north. While one might expect the roll signs of this southbound car to read "Woodward - River," the motorman had apparently already advanced it to reflect its next destination - the "Log Cabin" loop at Palmer Park, north of Six Mile Road. Overshadowing normal operations this particular Sunday was a 17-car streetcar parade commemorating 90 years of street railway operation in Detroit.

Below is a closer scan:

235 close

Check out those brick streets! You could even catch a boat to Bob-Lo :-)


small

Michigan Rails '93 April. - Wilbur E. Hague photo.
City of Detroit DSR 3849 is shown making its way south on Griswold toward Jefferson Avenue on May 31, 1947.

Below is a closer scan:



You could shop for a new Ford at Bill Brown even in '47. Note the brick between the rails, but asphalt elsewhere. The Guardian Building makes a beautiful background.

More photos coming soon!
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The_ed
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Posted on Thursday, November 29, 2007 - 2:59 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I think Dayton, Ohio still uses the electric coaches.
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Busterwmu
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Registered: 09-2004
Posted on Thursday, December 06, 2007 - 1:50 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Here are the rest of the DSR streetcar photos I've scanned from various copies of the Michigan Railfan calendars. There are a wide variety of views in a number of locations around the city presented here. I hope you enjoy them!


200

March 1975 Photo by Dr. Norm Herbert.
DSR PCC 200 or 300 stops to let pedestrians cross Woodward Avenue as it navitages Detroit's Main Street in front of the S.S. Kresge Co. DSR buses of various models are parked along the curb here.

Below, a closer view:

200 close



223

November 1974 Photo by Dr. Norman Herbert.
DSR PCC #223 is bound for City Hall on the Woodward Line in early 1956 - the last year of operation. Any idea where this is? The church tower on the left in the distance would be some clue. Nice streetlight, too.

Below, a closer scan:

223 close

An Arrow Blackberry Brandy, anyone?


3003

April 1978 Photo by Bill Miller.
To carry the heavy traffic to and from Ford River Route, trailer cars were often used. Here Kuhlman built #3003 is ready to leave the Wyoming carbarns with a trailer car to head for the Rouge Plant to meet the shift change.

Below: a closer view:

3003 close small



3017 color

Cover, 1991. Howard S. Babcock photo.
With gasoline and tire rationing programs in place, transit ridership in Detroit skyricketed in the early 1940s. To meet demand, the DSR pulled over 100 cars from storage and ran them through a hasty rehabilitation program. Included were 127 former Detroit United Railways steel-sided cars in the 3000 and 3100 series, which were heated with coal stoves. Several of the refurbished cars were given a red, white, and blue scheme to promote the sale of war bonds, such as the 3017 shown here at the Baker Carhouse in 1947.

Below, a closer view:

3017 close



3557 small

September 1973 Photo by W. E. Hague.
Brick Streets and Peter Witt cars were common to the Detroit Scene when 3557 came along the tracks of the Grand Belt Line and prepared to turn north on 12th Street to continue toe Trumbull Run.

Below, a closer view of this busy scene:

3557 closeup



3777 bridge small

July 1991 William J. Miller photo.
The DSR's Fort-Kercheval line was former on Sept 18, 1932 when the former Fort-Through and Kercheval lines were consolidated. The new line was an east/west crosstown route that ran through the downtown area. It also served Ford Motor Company's Rouge manufacturing complex in Dearborn during shift change periods. Peter Witt type 3777 is shown crossing the Rouge River on Fort Street's double-leaf bascule bridge in 1945. The streetcars were replaces by buses on the Fort segment on June 23, 1949, and on the Kercheval segment on December 15, 1949.

Below, a closer view of 3777:

3777



X-92 small

May 1989, Thomas A. Dworman photo.
With its flatbed section loaded with parts bound for the Gratiot and Jefferson Avenue carhouses, DSR supply car X-92 is shown on Oakland Ave. near the Davison Expressway. At this time in 1949, DSR shop forces were still responsible for operating 537 street railway vehicles: 351 Peter Witt types and 186 Presidents' Conference Committee cars. Note the traffic light just behind the flatbed section.

A closer view here, too:




Finally, an even closer view of Michigan Rails '93 April. - Wilbur E. Hague photo.
City of Detroit DSR 3849 is shown making its way south on Griswold toward Jefferson Avenue on May 31, 1947.

3847 Griswold
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Reddog289
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Username: Reddog289

Post Number: 129
Registered: 08-2007
Posted on Sunday, December 09, 2007 - 5:15 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

looking at these photos reminds me of how much stuff i got left to move from my moms. got the DSR books miss looking at them.
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Swede1934
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Username: Swede1934

Post Number: 36
Registered: 04-2007
Posted on Monday, December 10, 2007 - 9:30 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Lots of fun looking at these pictures, and a lot of memories. During the war years, streetcar fares were 6 cents. As a ten year old I had fun trying to put one over on the conductors by depositing a steel and a copper penny in the coin box and then trying to melt into the crowd. Sometimes it worked, and then other times it resulted in a gruff voice demanding the rest of the fare. Anyone else have these memories??