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Matt Cosgro photo, all rights reserved. Used with permission.
A familliar sight in Boston's streetcar subways and on its surface routes were trains of unique large center entrance cars. More than 400 of them were built for the Boston Elevated between 1917 and 1921, and of the total, 300 were equipped to run in trains of two or three cars. The very wide center doors were used for both entrance and exit, passengers passing the conductor and depositing fares before moving to a seat or to stand in the aisles at either end of the car. A unique feature of these cars was that the the trolley bases were mounted at either end of the monitor, rather than in the center, as was usual. The trolley ropes came down to catchers at the conductor's stand in the center of the car; a slotlike trap door opened the width of the monitor, so the conductor could open it and reset the pole without leaving his post.
Two of these, built in 1919 by Kuhlman of Cleveland, are Seashore's Nos. 6131 and 6270, the latter acquired from service in 1953, the former as a converted sand car in 1974, Number 6270 was stored at the Evereett Shops before coming to Maine, and it suffered severely from acid rain generated by a sulfur pile at a nearby chemical plant. The subway, America's first, was mainly served by these cars for many years. The center entrance cars had a rated seating capacity of 56, but each could accomodate more than 100 standees, making them excellent vehicles for handling large crowdssuch as were transported during rush hours and to athletic events at Boston's Fenway Park and the Boston Garden. Their large capacity and ability to run in multiple unit on the subway-surface lines are some of the reasons why they lasted until the last arrival of Boston's last order of PCC cars could replace them all.
History from Historic Cars: The National Collection at the Seashore Trolley Museum by Ben Minnich
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