The railway's first electric car ran on the South Hadley Falls line at about 2pm on August 8, 1891, and by the end of that year all routes had been electrified.
The very first run however proved to not be a resounding success as aside from Loomis and the board of directors, no passengers climbed aboard on the maiden run of an electric car; it was not until the return trip back over the bridge from South Hadley that one Jesse L. Bliss became the new system's first passenger.
Bliss himself would go on to try to become a driver of the cars, however reportedly jumped one of the trolleys off the tracks on his own first run.

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.

Another feature that typified railways in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was trolley parks; in the years immediately after the electrification of the system, Loomis purchased a large lot on the southeastern side of Mount Tom and in 1894 purchased a post-and-beam stage for performers there.
In 1895 the railway was extended to this site, and by 1897 the area was officially chartered at Mountain Park.

In his 1908 report to Mayor Nathan P. Avery, landscape architect and planner Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. urged the city to work to more closely align its planning with the development of the street railway in a working relationship, saying a liaison or authority ought to be established in determining future extensions and improvements in the electric railway lines operating in the city, stressing it would yield some of the most economical growth of housing capacity in tandem with the grid system.
The railway's first electric car ran on the South Hadley Falls line at about 2pm on August 8, 1891, and by the end of that year all routes had been electrified. The very first run however proved to not be a resounding success as aside from Loomis and the board of directors, no passengers climbed aboard on the maiden run of an electric car; it was not until the return trip back over the bridge from South Hadley that one Jesse L. Bliss became the new system's first passenger. Bliss himself would go on to try to become a driver of the cars, however reportedly jumped one of the trolleys off the tracks on his own first run.
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.
Another feature that typified railways in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was trolley parks; in the years immediately after the electrification of the system, Loomis purchased a large lot on the southeastern side of Mount Tom and in 1894 purchased a post-and-beam stage for performers there. In 1895 the railway was extended to this site, and by 1897 the area was officially chartered at Mountain Park.
In his 1908 report to Mayor Nathan P. Avery, landscape architect and planner Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. urged the city to work to more closely align its planning with the development of the street railway in a working relationship, saying a liaison or authority ought to be established in determining future extensions and improvements in the electric railway lines operating in the city, stressing it would yield some of the most economical growth of housing capacity in tandem with the grid system.
Holyoke Street Railway