What years did the Holyoke Street Railway operate?
58747825#2
Operated by the Holyoke Street Railway Company, abbreviated on livery as the Hly. St. Ry. Co., the streetcar system begin operation on September 24, 1884, consolidated with the Amherst and Sunderland Street Railway in 1907, and ceased operations as a streetcar operator in 1937. Regular bus operations began in 1921, and soon after the incorporation of the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority in 1977, the company began serving as a contract operator. This service continued until 1987, when a dispute between labor and management led regular bus service to an abrupt end, with would-be passengers still waiting at stops, on July 1, 1987. After four years of inactivity and with a municipal school bus contract failing to pass negotiations, the company liquidated its assets and had dissolved by 1991.
Holyoke Street Railway
58747825#16
The railway's ties with the Holyoke Street Railway began in 1902 when the stockholders and directors voted to increase the capital stock of the company to construct a line across the Notch in the Holyoke Range and connect with the Hampshire Street Railway system at the Granby town line. The Hampshire Street Railway, organized that same year, served as a collaboration of the interests of the Amherst and Holyoke railways, with Walter Cowls and William Loomis elected as sitting directors in the following year at an annual meeting at the Holyoke company's offices. In the following year the railway began advertising jointly with the Holyoke Street Railway as the best way to reach "The Famous Amherst 'Notch'", and by 1905 the entirety of the system was leased to Holyoke.
Holyoke Street Railway
58747825#13
The Amherst and Sunderland Street Railway was an interurban streetcar system that operated in Amherst, Sunderland, Pelham, Granby, and South Hadley, Massachusetts. From 1897 until 1932, trolleys operated between Sunderland, the Massachusetts Agricultural College (now UMass Amherst), and connected with the Holyoke Street Railway's system at "The Notch" after 1902. This rail line, providing freight and passenger service, was built by the short-lived Hampshire Street Railway specifically to connect the other two systems; the Hampshire Street Railway would lease the line to the Holyoke railway in 1905, which ultimately consolidated with it, along with Amherst & Sunderland, in 1907. After the merger the name was kept as a legacy and lines to the north of the Holyoke Range were referred to as the Amherst and Sunderland Division of the Holyoke Street Railway. While the HSR would continue operations in Amherst as a bus carrier, after trolley service ceased in 1932 the A&S name was dropped altogether.
Holyoke Street Railway
58747825#18
The Mount Tom Railroad, also known as the Mount Tom Railway, was a funicular mountain railway on the northeast slope of Mount Tom in Holyoke, Massachusetts which was operated by the Holyoke Street Railway from 1897 until 1938. Built in 1897, the railway quickly gained national fame when it was visited by President William McKinley who remarked upon the beauty of the mountainside. It was closely identified with the Summit Houses which adorned the mountaintop with the most ornate first two designed by local architect James A. Clough. At the foot of the railway sat Mountain Park, which connected the cable railway with the Holyoke Street Railway system.
Holyoke Street Railway
58747825#20
Construction began in early 1897 under the Charles F. Parker Company of New York City, and by June, the Mount Tom Railroad Company had officiated a 25 year operating lease with the Holyoke Street Railway. The inaugural ride took place on June 17, 1897, with a number of city officials, railway employees, and officials of the Wason Manufacturing Company being the first passengers. The railway briefly rose to national fame when President McKinley and First Lady Ida Saxton rode to the summit house on June 20, 1899.
Holyoke Street Railway
58747825#5
The system rapidly expanded its service capacity; in 1884, the system had 2 cars and 5 horses operating a line between Main Street in Holyoke and South Hadley Falls, by 1886 this had expanded to 3 other routes in Holyoke and the livery totaled at 15 cars and 56 horses. At the time it was commonplace for patrons to keep lumps or cubes of sugar in their pockets for often ornery horses. In its earliest years it met some resistance from Hampshire County commissioners and South Hadley selectmen, threatening to withdraw from South Hadley Falls in 1886 due to policies related to taxation and maintenance of roads and a former bridge connecting Holyoke across the Connecticut River. The following year, it was proposed the company stop every other car on the South Hadley route on the Holyoke side of where the Vietnam Memorial Bridge stands today, to halve taxes paid for use of the bridge there at that time. Public opinion on the South Hadley side of the river remained largely in favor of the company, however one writer for The Republican compared the ordeal to "child's play" due to lack of compromise by either. Some consensus was eventually reached during the construction of the bridge's successor, the Hadley-Holyoke Bridge by engineer Edward S. Shaw, as the railway company's lawyer would work with Hampshire and Hampden county commissioners to negotiate the bridge's width and location of the railway tracks.
Holyoke Street Railway
58747825#0
The Holyoke Street Railway (HSR) was an interurban streetcar and bus system operating in Holyoke, Massachusetts as well as surrounding communities with connections in Amherst, Belchertown, Chicopee, Easthampton, Granby, Northampton, Pelham, South Hadley, Sunderland, Westfield, and West Springfield. Throughout its history the railway system shaped the cultural institutions of Mount Tom, being operator of the mountain's famous summit houses, one of which hosted President McKinley, the Mount Tom Railroad, and the trolley park at the opposite end of this funicular line, Mountain Park.
Holyoke Street Railway
58747825#23
While routes have changed in the decades since the railway's closure, the PVTA continues to provide bus service in Holyoke as well as all other municipalities previously covered by the former carrier's services. Due to several recessions in the 1980s, the railway's former amusement park Mountain Park shuttered the same year as buses ceased, in 1987. This year coincides with the Railway Company's closure however the two were unaffiliated by that time; Louis Pellissier Sr. had sold the amusement park to the Collins family of Lincoln Park in 1952, they assumed operations the following year until its closure.
Holyoke Street Railway
58747825#4
The Holyoke Street Railway Company held its first meeting on February 12, 1884, with a charter granted by the Office of Secretary of the Commonwealth Henry B. Pierce on June 11, 1884. According to the company's articles of association, it began with capital of $25,000 (≈$692,000 in 2017 USD) with 250 shares of $100 each issued, and was authorized to operate as a horsecar rail system in South Hadley and Holyoke. The company's first president was William A. Chase, and its first board of directors included two members who would later become mayors of Holyoke, Franklin P. Goodall and George H. Smith.
Holyoke Street Railway
58747825#8
The electrification of old horse trams came within less than a decade for the Holyoke Street Railway and in Massachusetts as a whole. When the railway's first electric cars appeared in 1891, at the time about a third of all street railway lines in Massachusetts had electric overhead systems. However by the turn of the century not only were these cars commonplace in the Holyoke system, they comprised more than 99% of such streetcar lines in the Commonwealth.
Holyoke Street Railway