Horsecar

This article is about equine-powered railcars. For the type of stock car used to transport racehorses, see Stock car (rail) § Specialized applications.

Manchester, New Hampshire's first horsecar, dating from 1877, and on display about 1908.

A horsecar, horse-drawn tram, or (U.S.) horse-drawn streetcar, is an animal-powered (usually horse) tram or streetcar.

Overview

The horse-drawn tram (horsecar) was an early form of public rail transport that developed out of industrial haulage routes that had long been in existence, and from the omnibus routes that first ran on public streets in the 1820s, using the newly improved iron or steel rail or 'tramway'. These were local versions of the stagecoach lines and picked up and dropped off passengers on a regular route, without the need to be pre-hired. Horsecars on tramlines were an improvement over the omnibus, as the low rolling resistance of metal wheels on iron or steel rails (usually grooved from 1852 on) allowed the animals to haul a greater load for a given effort than the omnibus and gave a smoother ride. The horse-drawn streetcar combined the low cost, flexibility, and safety of animal power with the efficiency, smoothness, and all-weather capability of a rail right-of-way.

History

The Swansea and Mumbles Railway ran the world's first passenger tram service in 1807

Mule-drawn streetcar, Houston, 1870s.

London Tramways two-horse tram, about 1890.

A busy horsecar hub at Dam Square in Amsterdam, circa 1900.

An original 1886 horsecar in the 1911 parade celebrating groundbreaking for the Panama-California Exposition at San Diego, California.

United Kingdom

The first tram services in the world were started by the Swansea and Mumbles Railway in Wales, using specially designed carriages on an existing tramline built for horse-drawn freight dandies. Fare-paying passengers were carried on a line between Oystermouth, Mumbles and Swansea Docks from 1807. The Gloucester and Cheltenham Tramroad (1809) carried passengers although its main purpose was freight.

In spite of its early start, it took many years for horse-drawn streetcars to become widely acceptable across Britain; the American George Francis Train first introduced them to Birkenhead in 1860 but was jailed for "breaking and injuring" the highway when he next tried to lay the first tram tracks on the roads of London. An 1870 Act of Parliament overcame these legal obstacles by defining responsibilities and for the next three decades many local tramway companies were founded, using horse-drawn carriages, until replaced by cable, steam or electric traction. Many companies adopted a design of a partly enclosed double-decker carriage hauled by two horses. The last horse-drawn tram was retired from London in 1915. Horses continued to be used for light shunting well into the 20th century. The last horse used for shunting on British Railways was retired on 21 February 1967 in Newmarket, Suffolk.

United States of America

In the United States the very first streetcar appeared on November 26, 1832, on the New York and Harlem Railroad in New York City. The cars were designed by John Stephenson of New Rochelle, New York, and constructed at his company in New York City. The earliest streetcars used horses and sometimes mules, usually two as a team, to haul the cars. Rarely, other animals were tried, including humans in emergency circumstances. By the mid-1880s, there were 415 street railway companies in the USA operating over 6,000 miles (9,700 km) of track and carrying 188 million passengers per year using horsecars. By 1890 New Yorkers took 297 horsecar rides per capita per year. The average street car horse had a life expectancy of about two years.

Canada

In 1861, Toronto Street Railway horsecars replaced horse driven omnibuses as a public transit mode in Toronto. Starting in 1892, electric streetcars emerged in Toronto and by 1894 the TSR stopped operating horsecars in Toronto.

Elsewhere

The first horse-drawn rail cars on the Continental Europe were operated from 1828 by the České Budějovice - Linz railway. Europe saw a proliferation of horsecar use for new tram services from the mid-1860s, with many towns building new networks.

Tropical plantations (for products such as henequen and bananas) made extensive use of animal-powered trams for both passengers and freight, often employing the Decauville narrow-gauge portable track system. In some cases these systems were very extensive and evolved into interurban tram networks (as in the Yucatan, which sported over 3,000 kilometers (1,900 mi) of such lines). Surviving examples may be found in both the Yucatan and Brazil.

Decline

Problems with horsecars included the fact that any given animal could only work so many hours on a given day, had to be housed, groomed, fed and cared for day in and day out, and produced prodigious amounts of manure, which the streetcar company was charged with storing and then disposing. Since a typical horse pulled a streetcar for about a dozen miles (19 km) a day and worked for four or five hours, many systems needed ten or more horses in stable for each horsecar.

Horsecars were largely replaced by electric-powered streetcars following the invention by Frank J. Sprague of an overhead trolley system on streetcars for collecting electricity from overhead wires. His spring-loaded trolley pole used a wheel to travel along the wire. In late 1887 and early 1888, using his trolley system, Sprague installed the first successful large electric street railway system in Richmond, Virginia. Long a transportation obstacle, the hills of Richmond included grades of over 10%, and were an excellent proving ground for acceptance of the new technology in other cities. Within a year, the economy of electric power had replaced more costly horsecars in many cities. By 1889, 110 electric railways incorporating Sprague's equipment had been begun or planned on several continents.

Many large metropolitan lines lasted well into the early twentieth century. New York City had a regular horsecar service on the Bleecker Street Line until its closure in 1917. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had its Sarah Street line drawn by horses until 1923. The last regular mule-drawn cars in the US ran in Sulphur Rock, Arkansas, until 1926 and were commemorated by a U.S. postage stamp issued in 1983. Toronto's horse-drawn streetcar operations ended in 1891. In other countries animal-powered tram services often continued well into the 20th century; the last mule tram service in Mexico City ended in 1932, and a mule tram in Celaya, Mexico, survived until 1954.

Operational horsecars

A few original horsecar lines have survived or have been revived as tourist attractions, and in recent years several replica horsecar lines have been built. Below is a list of locations around the world with operational horsecars that are open to the public.

Location	Image	Coordinates	Address	Country	Track gauge	Year originally built	Notes
Ardenwood Historic Farm		37.561714°N 122.042165°W / 37.561714; -122.042165 (Ardenwood Historic Farm)	Fremont, California	USA	3 ft (914 mm)	1988	Diesel locomotives also pull passengers on this line and steam locomotives are used during special events.
Döbeln Tramway		51.119467°N 13.119690°E / 51.119467; 13.119690 (Döbeln Tramway)	Döbeln, Saxony	Germany	1,000 mm (3 ft 3 3⁄8 in) metre gauge	1892
Douglas Bay Horse Tramway		54.167378°N 4.460777°W / 54.167378; -4.460777 (Douglas Bay Horse Tramway)	Douglas, Middle	Isle of Man	3 ft (914 mm)	1876
Ghora Tram		31.450257°N 73.563902°E / 31.450257; 73.563902 (Ghora Tram)	Ghangha Pur, Punjab	Pakistan	2 ft (610 mm)	1898
Historical Village of Hokkaido		43.044230°N 141.499428°E / 43.044230; 141.499428 (Historical Village of Hokkaido)	Sapporo, Hokkaido	Japan	2 ft 6 in (762 mm)	1983
Horse-Drawn Streetcars (Disneyland Park (Paris))		48.871276°N 2.779073°E / 48.871276; 2.779073 (Horse-Drawn Streetcars (Disneyland Park (Paris)))	Marne-la-Vallée, Île-de-France	France	3 ft (914 mm)	1992	Located in Disneyland Paris.
Koiwai Farm		39.753788°N 141.020163°E / 39.753788; 141.020163 (Koiwai Farm)	Shizukuishi, Iwate	Japan	3 ft (914 mm)	1904
Main Street Vehicles (Disneyland)		33.810506°N 117.919564°W / 33.810506; -117.919564 (Main Street Vehicles (Disneyland))	Anaheim, California	USA	3 ft (914 mm)	1955	Located in the Disneyland Resort.
Main Street Vehicles (Magic Kingdom)		28.417105°N 81.581644°W / 28.417105; -81.581644 (Main Street Vehicles (Magic Kingdom))	Bay Lake, Florida	USA	3 ft (914 mm)	1971	Located in Walt Disney World.
Pferdeeisenbahn (Kerschbaum)		48.584936°N 14.470366°E / 48.584936; 14.470366 (Pferdeeisenbahn (Kerschbaum))	Rainbach im Mühlkreis, Upper Austria	Austria	1,106 mm (3 ft 7 1⁄2 in)	1828	Reconstructed portion of the Budweis-Linz-Gmunden Horse Railway, the first railway line in Continental Europe to carry passengers.
Spiekerooger Inselbahn		53.769413°N 7.689123°E / 53.769413; 7.689123 (Spiekerooger Inselbahn)	Spiekeroog, Lower Saxony	Germany	1,000 mm (3 ft 3 3⁄8 in) metre gauge	1885
Victor Harbor Horse Drawn Tram		35.556095°S 138.624294°E / -35.556095; 138.624294 (Victor Harbor Horse Drawn Tram)	Victor Harbor, South Australia	Australia	5 ft 3 in (1,600 mm)	1864

See also

• Cable car (railway)
• Carville (San Francisco)
• Dandy waggon
• Wagonway(horse-drawn railways)
• List of horse-drawn railways
• Omaha Horse Railway
• Rail transport in Walt Disney Parks and Resorts
• Slate waggon
• Trolley (horse-drawn)

External links

• The oldest surviving horse drawn tramway operating in Douglas on the Isle of Man

• Colombia's horsecar history and restoration process
• History of Columbus, Ohio horsecar lines from 1863 to 1892
• Pennsylvania Trolley Museum
• Reader's Companion to American History, Public Transportation: the Horsecar
• Trolleys: The Cars That Built Our Cities by Transit Gloria Mundi