KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine - Now we look back to what many describe as a golden age of public transport in America. I'm talking about an era when trolleys, streetcars, trams and electric cable cars ruled the road. Think Judy Garland in the classic film "Meet Me in St. Louis." As Americans increasingly relocated to cities and towns in the early 20th century, street trolleys became the dominant way for ordinary Americans to get from A to B - at least until about 75 years ago. And that, incidentally, is when the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport was established. For this the final installment in our summer side trip series, we take a look at a place that proudly bills itself as the biggest, and oldest, electric railway museum in the world.
In a musical nod to era of the streetcars, old time jazz is pumped through speakers inside the museum. Outside, in a 300-plus-acre campus, there are more than 250 cars, most of them electric-powered street trolleys. Seashore Trolley Museum Executive Director Sally Bates says the collection includes at least one representative vehicle from every major streetcar system in North America.
And it doesn't stop there. "We have some cars from Great Britain, we have some from Australia, New Zealand, Germany and Italy represented in our collection," including an ornate green double decker tram shipped over from Glasgow, Scotland, where it was built in the 1930's. It features an upper deck fitted with plush leather seating.
There's a a horse-drawn trolley from the late 1800's, and an open top observation car, built to take people on viewing trips around the scenic mountains of Quebec more than 100 years ago. The museum also has its own movie star, in the form of a retired Boston streetcar that was featured in a 1963 Otto Preminger film.
Another car - nicknamed Narcissus - was used by President Theodore Roosevelt when he was a young man to travel between Portland and Lewiston - that particular car stars in Ken Burns' new documentary about the Roosevelts.
Perhaps the most treasured exhibit, though, is this one: "Car number 31, the first one they acquired, we refer to to as the 'mother car,' " Bates says, "and it is still at Seashore, and we only operate it on special occasions."
Number 31 used to work the streets of Biddeford and Saco, until it was retired in 1939, when the community switched to motor-powered buses. A group of rail buffs from Boston - looking to preserve this fast-disappearing piece of transportation history - bought number 31 from city officials for $150, and this is how the museum got started.
As Sally Bates explains, the trolley car revolution helped bring about big social changes. "Street cars were what made it possible for people's lives to grow larger - they no longer had to work right next door to where they lived, they could take public transportation to work, they could take public transportation out to parks and so forth for recreational purposes."
"I worked in high tech and I was at the burnout stage, so I said, you know, this is great, this is about as low-tech as I could find," says retired I-T professional Bill Mallory. Mallory is a streetcar operator - one of a team of volunteers who keep the place going from day-to-day.
Woodworking enthusiast Jim Mackell is another. He often works several hours a day in the museum's restoration shop, where it can take years to bring an old trolley car back to its full glory.
"The trolley cars I work on are usually a hundred years old, and first we have to figure out, how did they do that a hundred years ago - before power tools?" he says. "And then we have to figure out how to repair it."
Randy Leclair runs the restoration shop. He says one of the cars being renovated might be of particular interest to baseball fans. For 20 years, it ran between Boston and Lexington until it was retired in 1921. Then it was turned into a diner.
"From what I understand, there was a big thing, when the Boston Braves were still in Boston, the Boston Braves would always eat in this car on their way out of town, so it was a touchstone for them," he says.
The Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport is open 7 days a week up to Columbus Day.