BQX - NYC Streetcars: 1956 - Brooklyn's Last Trolleys

Ain't those trolleys look just beautiful, not even one word of advertising on them. 👍

I was born in Brooklyn in 1952. By the time I was old enough to travel with mom & dad on public transportation (around 1956) most of the trolleys were gone in Brooklyn, and the streets were paved over EXCEPT much of McDonald Avenue. My mom and I would travel on that street in the family car (with the original Culver train line above us), and I'd always ask her what those "train tracks" were for on the street itself. Long, long gone...

As a kid (60s) they had already stopped running. They covered the tracks with a thin layer of asphalt. But, I used to see portions of the trolley tracks poking up through the asphalt all the time.

I’m watching this footage now in 2019, in awe like wow, look at the neighborhood...ocean n church...McDonald ave...🤦🏻‍♂️ I literally just drove these blocks today...I love vintage footage of yesteryears

We had these streetcars in Toronto until about 20 years ago. They were painted dark red instead of green. They were replaced by a new model that worked for about 20 years. Now we have the third generation of streetcars. Toronto's streetcars operate on some of the major streets, and carry millions of people every year. We call them the "red rockets".

East Flatbush Brooklyn..i couldn't imagine how they would run on congested Church Ave now

Swell video, takes me back in time. I grew up (till age seven) on 39th Street in Brooklyn. We had a trolley that ran up 39th Street to 13th Ave where it turned and squiggled under the elevated Culver Line trains (past the Bocce ball courts) and onto Church Ave. I loved going through the Trolley tunnels (under the intersections) and recall at least three tunnels. We moved in mid 1950's and I ain't rid a Brooklyn trolley since. On July 4th adults would lay bottle rockets in the trolley tracks and light'em. The rockets would scoot along in the track grooves, it was boss.

What a beautiful elegant mode of transport! So much better than the garbage, ugly, noisy & smelly buses we have clogging up modern NYC streets!

Brooklyn has always ruled!

I remember them well. My grandmother used to take me from Bensonhurst to Coney Island. I think the fare for her was a nickle and mine was free.

I rode them every Dat going to my Baseball playing Games at Prospect Parks Parade Grounds only a 15 cents Ride relaxing all the way to and from the games Days long gone, But not Forgotten, Etc.

I love my borough...it’s a love/hate relationship but overall,there’s no place like Brooklyn and I’m proud to be a Brooklynite

It is 2023, and I'm watching this. The Narrator voice is wonderful. Look at the Beverly movie theater. Wow!

Unfortunately trolleys were before my time in Brooklyn. I did get to ride on the old subway cars with the cane seats for two years as a teenager before they also got rid of them.

7:57 I was in the Beverly theater.

PCC cars still running in Boston on the Mattapan Trolly line in 2020.

Who remembers the Free Passess you asked the drivers for so you can transfer from one Trolly to another for free later on the buses had that also etc.

As a kid in 56; we use to put Pennies down on the Trolly tracks and watch them get flatened out ade even joined together fum back then years later I watched the same roads and trolly tracks being covered up with smelly hot Tar, For the buses and cars etc.

When I was very little, I remember that my mom took me for a ride on one of these lines because she knew their days were numbered.

Fiorello LaGuardia really hated private transit companies didn't he? He built the IND to replace the IRT elevated railways did he not? And Robert Moses who never saw a plan to generate more auto traffic he didn't like. They made such a beautiful pair!! And I can tell in the 1956 film there were areas of Brooklyn that were already decrepitating and being torn down thanks to the automobile.