Capital Streetcars by John DeFerrari

Author:John DeFerrari
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2015-03-13T04:00:00+00:00

A conductor follows passengers onto a crowded car on the former Columbia Street Railway line on H Street Northeast in the 1910s. Library of Congress.

WASHINGTON’S ODDEST OCCUPATION

Motormen and conductors worked long, grueling hours—often twelve to fifteen hours a day, seven days a week—and many of them faced considerable dangers on a daily basis. In horsecar days, operators had been required to stand on the open platform at the front of the car, exposed to the elements in all kinds of weather. With the advent of faster-moving electric streetcars, the motormen faced worse exposure on these open platforms. Many suffered from hypothermia. In some cities, streetcar unions pushed to eliminate open platforms, but company officials resisted, arguing that the glass front of a closed compartment would become fogged or soiled and prevent operators from clearly seeing where they were going. The struggle for closed vestibules came to the attention of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, which in 1903 collected signatures on a petition to Congress to ban open platform cars in the District. The drive was successful, and a law requiring closed vestibules on D.C. streetcars passed that same year.

Conductors braved hazards that are unthinkable today. One of the most harrowing was having to work the open cars that were so popular and crowded in the warmer months. Because there was no center aisle, they were obliged to balance themselves on the narrow running board that ran along the side of the car to reach each passenger and collect his or her fare. “Thus the conductor was constantly swinging along this narrow footboard all day, with a fare box in one hand, a punch and bunch of transfers in the other, trying to keep his balance, like a goat on a narrow precipice,” an early streetcar union executive recalled.109

One day in September 1903, twenty-two-year-old William Smallwood, who lived on Benning Road, was working as a conductor on a crowded open car near the far eastern end of the Benning Road line at Chesapeake Junction on the Maryland border. Of course, the streetcars on these suburban stretches used overhead trolley lines, which were mounted on poles that stood between the two sets of incoming and outgoing tracks. Smallwood had just started to make his rounds collecting fares from the many commuters who were headed into the city when he leaned far over the side to get around two men who were standing on the running board. Unfortunately, the fast-moving car passed a trolley pole at that exact moment, and Smallwood was struck in the head and thrown off the car into a ditch. The passengers “gave the alarm, and as quickly as possible the car was stopped and backed to the scene of the accident. Smallwood was unconscious. He was placed on one of the seats and carried to the Casualty Hospital,” where doctors said he “had only the very smallest chance for recovery, as the right side of his skull was crushed.”110 Despite their dangers, the popular cars continued in service for many more years; the last one was not removed from service in Washington until the 1930s.

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