Horse Cars

Travel back to the past, when horses pulled street cars and coaches.

By Sam Moore
Published on January 3, 2023
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Undated photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
A horse car of the Cambridge Horse Railroad, which was the first street railway in Boston, opening in 1856.

Human nature being what it is, most folks would rather ride somewhere than walk, so how did people get around the rapidly growing cities during the 19th century? The well off could afford to own their own “coach and four,” along with a driver and a footman or two to take care of them. A middle class family might have a buggy and a horse, and lesser people walked.

An early innovation in the larger cities here and in Europe was the “omnibus,” a wagon gear with an enclosed coach containing windows and a bench seat down each side. The driver sat on the roof and collected fares through an opening just under his seat. Passengers climbed a flight of steps and entered through a rear door, handed the fare up to the driver and took their seat.

The Oct. 2, 1864 issue of the New York Herald gives us this look at riding the omnibus: Modern martyrdom may be succinctly defined as riding in a New York omnibus. The driver quarrels with the passengers. There are quarrels about getting on, quarrels about getting off. There are quarrels about change and quarrels about the ticket swindle. The driver swears at the passenger and the passengers harangue the driver through the trap hole. Reputable clergymen in white chokers are obliged to listen to loud oaths. Thus the omnibus rolls along, a veritable bedlam on wheels.

Then, in the early 1830s, street car lines began to be established in New York City. The rails were set into the streets flush with the pavement and the cars were pulled by one or two horses. The cars were lightly built of wood and were decorated with fancy striping and gilt lettering. There was no heat and perhaps an oil lamp or two for light at night. Besides the driver on the front platform there was usually a conductor to take fares and assist passengers.

Before long other cities, and even smaller towns began to sprout horse car lines, and in 1882 the Railway Review stated there were at that time in the U.S. 415 street railways in operation. These roads had over 3,000 miles of track, 35,000 employees, and owned 18,000 cars and 100,000 horses, who ate 150,000 tons of hay and 11,000,000 bushels of grain each year, while carrying 1,212,400,000 passengers.

By the 1890s, horse car lines were fast being replaced by electrically driven cars which were fast, dependable, and quiet, and needed no hay or oats, while leaving no road apples behind to be cleaned up. Although the conversion was expensive, by the turn of the century virtually all the former horse lines were electric.

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