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On This Day in Beacon's History: April 30, 1931 - Old Car Barns No Use to New Buses

Old photo of the Car Barns facing Main Street with two Fishkill Electric Railway trolleys parked in front. The barns were located off Main Street, just east of South Chestnut Street

...Trolley Barns on Main Street for 38 Years

The Fishkill Electric Railway Company, which had operated electric streetcars in Beacon from 1892 to 1930, announced on April 30, 1931 that it was no longer interested in leasing the car barns on Main Street that once housed the company's trolley cars. Fishkill Electric had run its last trolley car a year (1930) earlier in April and at that time had switched over to a fleet of ten buses (including five new Mack buses) to transport its customers around Beacon and to Fishkill. The buses now were to be housed in Joseph O'Grady's garage on South Street. Central Hudson Gas and Electric Corporation, owner of the car barns, no longer had use for the old Main Street building and would demolish the building in 1932.


via the Beacon Historical Society April 2009 newsletter

Views: 582

Tags: beacon, history, trolley

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Comment by Mark Roland on May 1, 2009 at 9:46am
Hi Sonia, just to clarify, that was about the old streetcar system, not the subway. In any case, the page was actually a partial transcript of the film you saw on PBS. GM systematically wiped out not only the LA streetcars, but NYC and 100 other cities. Yeah, it's sad to think we had a much better system in place in many respects, then trashed it. It's estimated it would cost 300 billion to restore those systems today. But talk about an effective link from the train to Main!
Comment by Sonia Roy on April 30, 2009 at 9:51pm
Mark, funny you should link us to the LA subway system article. I just saw a documentary on PBS (I think...)about that. It was brutal. I don't believe I've seen a worse case of creating a monopoly and getting away with it. I was angry at the end of it, not that its that unusual for me, but I was unusually angry!!
Comment by Mark Roland on April 30, 2009 at 9:36pm
This depresses me. In many ways things were more civilized back then. Of course, where there's a problem, there's usually greed and a big corporation behind it. (Gee, I really hope we bail them out.)

Never mind the incline railway, bring back the trolleys. Come to think of it, the start of the decline of the incline coincided with the end of trolley service to the base of the mountain...
Comment by cheryl nelson on April 30, 2009 at 5:36pm
Can you imagine if these beauties still were active? Thanks Venessa for posting. See you at sailing tonight. And the guest speaker will be...
Comment by Venessa Miemis on April 30, 2009 at 2:33pm
it says in the caption that they were off main, just east of south chestnut street
Comment by Randy Casale on April 30, 2009 at 2:11pm
Does anyone know where on Main St the Electric car Garage was located
Comment by Kristen Cronin on April 30, 2009 at 2:03pm
wow, incredible.
Comment by Jinni James on April 30, 2009 at 10:57am
such character... fantastic.
Comment by Dan Rigney on April 30, 2009 at 10:26am
How beautiful were those vehicles! Love the cowcatcher fixtures. Great post Venessa!

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