When Gino DiCarlo was young, the street in front of his house in Schenectady was torn up. With each chunk of concrete that was ripped away, a portion of trolley track was revealed.
“I was just a kid and I started going to the library and looking up any information about trolleys,” said DiCarlo.
Now, he’s a published author on his favorite topic – his book “Trolleys of the Capital District” was published in 2009 – and he’ll talk about all things trolleys at the William K. Sanford Library in Colonie on Sunday, March 11, at 2 p.m., hosted by the Historical Society of the Town of Colonie.
“I’ll have some books for sale, will have a slideshow and a movie of the local trolley lines I hope to show,” said DiCarlo.
Trolleys might not seem too dynamic — they disappeared from the Capital District in 1946 — but they actually shaped an important part of local and national history, said DiCarlo.
“Albany and Schenectady had two of the biggest trolley lines in the world. In Schenectady, the longest trolley bridge in the world crossed the Mohawk River near Rexford,” said DiCarlo.
The first trolley line popped up in the area in 1890, around the time when it was the favored mode of transportation across the country and was basically a railroad car pulled by a horse. The trolleys that more frequently come to mind, clacking along railroad-esque tracks, were invented right here.
“It was really the General Electric technology that invented sending power along the lines long distances. The convertors of the power it takes to run a trolley car were all invented by GE, so the Schenectady railway was created so they could test their products they sold around the country,” said DiCarlo, adding that Thomas Edison was one of the railway’s first passengers. “Watervliet had one of the biggest trolley builders at the time and made cars for all over the country and the world.”
In the Capital District, trolleys didn’t just get people from here to there; they created the suburbs by making it possible to get in and out of the cities with ease.
“They created the suburbs of Albany, Schenectady and Troy by expanding their lines, what they called inner-urban lines. Three main trolley lines connected Saratoga, Lake George, Amsterdam and Gloversville,” said DiCarlo.
In fact, those trolley tracks that first piqued DiCarlo’s interest in front of his childhood home were part of an inner-urban line.
“When I first found those tracks, I was thinking there was a railroad on my street. … It was not a local line that goes around downtown, it’s what connects the other cities around it,” said DiCarlo, who said local rides cost about a nickel and inner-urban rides about a quarter. “Because of that trolley line, Saratoga probably got even more popular at the time because there was a way to get there from these other cities. … People were able to come from New York City on a train and then could easily go to Lake George or Saratoga on a trolley and that’s what they did. It definitely created the tourism you have in the Capital District.”
Despite all their functionality and convenience, trolleys came with their fair share of troubles, too.
“In 1901, there was a crash on the Fourth of July that killed 14 people in Gloversville and at the time, that was one of the first big transportation disasters in the U.S. and made headlines all over the country,” said DiCarlo. “Albany had a trolley strike in 1922 that made it necessary to bring in the National Guard to put down the protests and the riots that the strikers created and people were actually killed in Albany.”
DiCarlo became the trolley guru by abandoning research books (he could only find three books on trolleys, anyway) and going right to the source: riders.
“It was basically asking the old timers in town about it. There seemed to be a lot of fond memories of taking the trolley as opposed to having a car or bus,” said DiCarlo. “I’d hear stories from people about where they ran. There are still buildings sitting around nowadays … built by the trolley line.”
Some storage buildings by Latham Circle Mall used to be substations that provided power for the trolleys between Schenectady and Troy, and Central Avenue is home to an old substation for the Albany-Schenectady trolley line.
“There’s no sign at the places telling you that,” said DiCarlo.
DiCarlo managed to collect photos from some of his trolley-riding friends, so his book is full of local pictures narrated by the history he uncovered.
“The books is mostly a picture book of all the trolley lines … and has a history of each line,” said DiCarlo.
When trolleys became extinct after World War II, many lines were converted to bus routes.
DiCarlo will speak at the William K. Sanford Library at 629 Albany Shaker Road at 2 p.m. on Sunday, March 11.
