A rare thing indeed is the sight and sound of an old time trolley.

Most of these are of the silent streamlined type designed by the industry's Presidents' Conference Committee (PCC) in 1936 to meet auto and bus competition. Yet today, but six interurban lines remain of the hundreds which once criss-crossed the nation, and a mere dozen cities in the United States and Canada are still served by streetcars. In 1921, the elenric railway business was America's fifth industry, with 300,000 employees, a six billion dollar investment, and 15 billion riders - twelve times the number of passengers carried by the steam railroads in the same year. Less than 70 years have passed since 1888, when the first really successful electric car was placed in service. In all the annals of human endeavor, never has so large an enterprise grown and disappeared so swiftly as the traction industry. Because the collection represents nearly every phase of car design and development, this booklet is also a history of the trolley from 1873 to 1931. From this modest start has grown Maine's famous Trolley Museum, of which this is the official catalogue. Back in 1939, when the trend to other means of transport was already becoming irrevocably established, a dolzn men in Boston undertook to preserve for posterity, a single open car from Biddeford, Maine. 'Since World War II, the trolley car has been vanishing so rapidly from the American scene that few members of the younger generation have ever ridden a streetcar -this despite the fact that nearly every one of our large cities was laid out around an electric railway system.

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