The name of public transportation used in St. Louis

Factual Questions
1

Inspired by the disagreement in this thread in Cafe Society http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=298284

what was the name given to street railroads in the city of St. Louis prior to 1966.

In the book “Meet Me In St. Louis” and the subsequent film, there is the “Trolley Song” and the author of the book refers to trolleys, but nearly every other source I encounter refers to them as “streetcars” and my grandmother and mother, both of whom were natives of St. Louis (and both deceased), told me that St. Louis had no trolleys, just streetcars.

Are there any longtime Mound City residents lurking here who can shed some light on this topic?

2

I’m a longtime resident, 38 years, but arrived 4 moths after the “streetcars” quit running. Missed riding on the Hodemont line by just a little bit.

I’ve always heard them referred to as streetcars. But AFAIK, they’re just the same thing with a different name.

Now the “Toonerville Trolley” was something else!

3

I can’t speak to the name of the transit agency, or whatever the vehicles were officially or popularly called, but if they were powered by overhead wires, they had trolleys and were trolleys. “Trolley” is the name of the part that reaches up and touches the wire to get power.

A trolley is also defined as a streetcar. Please note that unless a streetcar has a trolley (pole or pantograph) it can not properly be called a trolley.

4

I moved to St. Louis in 1962, just in time for the second-to-last ending of the great streetcar lines, including Delmar and Wydown. These streetcars looked very much like buses, except they ran on rails in the middle of the street. And yes, they did have poles reaching up to the electric lines overhead.

Since the last of the streetcars disappeared four decades ago, all we have left is some old newsreel footage and a few memoirs, like Andrew A. Young’s Strets & Streetcars of St. Louis.
http://www.cmt-stl.org/clean/teamuphat.html

What are these trolleys of which you speak?

5

I asked Google about trolleys in 1904 St. Louis and it returned a World’s Fair postcard with the caption “One of the many trolley cars : the Louisiana exhibition, St. Louis, Mo.” It’s very faint but the caption can be seen among the treetops.

6

I think they’re going to try to revive trolleys/streetcars (whichever they had) on the Loop. At least that’s what I heard last year, though that may have changed. If they do go ahead with that plan, it’ll be a while, given all the construction and the current state of the surrounding area.

7

Trolley, streetcar, what’s the diff?

I lived in St. Louis when they had streetcars and trolleys; probably rode some, I don’t remember. I do remember that busses went more places and you had to walk out in the middle of a very wide boulevard to get on a trolley. Or a streetcar, not like a bus that comes to the curb.

To me they are interchangable terms. Clang! Clang!

8

Back when I lived in NYC, for a while we had electric buses. They used the overhead wires for power and could pull close to the curb to pickup and discharge passingers. They used two overhead wires, because as they ran on rubber tires, the return circuit through the tracks was not available.

The ones I remember ran up and down Corona Avenu in Queens.

9

San Francisco uses a lot of trolley coaches - probably a good third to half of the routes here are electric.

10

After making my post, I googled for “trolley bus” and got lots of hits. Nothing for New York yet. I did see some hits about SF though.