Clang, clang, clang went the trolley

Ding, ding, ding went the bell

Zing, zing, zing went my heartstrings

From the moment I saw him I fell

–”The Trolley Song,” 1944

The International Railway Company was Buffalo’s fifth-largest employer in 1928, carrying 500,000 daily passengers aboard 450 miles of track and 80 miles of bus route. The wheels of the IRC carried the majority of the Niagara Frontier workforce, who could travel by rail from downtown to every city neighborhood and as far as the Tonawandas, Lockport, and Niagara Falls. In this photograph, dated 1930, 11 passengers—all men in hats, some reading the Buffalo Courier-Express—travel aboard the No. 6 Sycamore. A uniformed driver mans the wheel. While Buffalo’s romance with the trolley ended in 1950—when the last of 800 streetcars were scrapped and burned—the streetcar is making a comeback across the United States. Modern streetcar systems, common in Europe, are now being built in cities like Cincinnati, Salt Lake City, Portland, and Washington, DC. Why not in Buffalo?

Image courtesy of The Buffalo History Museum. Used by permission.