I’m sure liking this version!
I like it too! Classic swing!
How about Kate Smith… from Mike
Well, that was different!
You know, there was a trolley that ran in Yonkers NY before WW2, and all who rode it said the motorman was a dead-ringer for the Skipper of the Toonerville Trolley!
Speaking of which, here’s a Toonerville Trolley cartoon from 1936, with Powerful Katrinka no less!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hqgWqk9mw8
Two weeks ago I saw a custom-made O gauge Toonerville Trolley at a train show. Saw the $800 price tag, had my heart attack, walked away after I recovered.
Came home with a much more reasonably priced Lionel Jersey Central “Camelback.”
Just about every old RRer ends up looking like that.
The conversion of Yonkers’ nine streetcar lines to bus started in 1951 and was completed in 1952. Part of the same system, the Pelham – Pelham Manor line, went bus in 1938? With a ceremony with Fontain Fox and a guest Steinway Lines Birney to stand-in for the original single-truck “Toonervilles.”
Thanks for that David! I knew there was something to that Yonkers-Toonerville connection, I just didn’t know the particulars.
And Fontaine Fox came to the close-down ceremony! That’s even better!
Taking the Toonerville theme even further, prior to and during World War Two Fort Benning GA had a narrow-gauge rail system to the training areas that utilized equipment from the “Trench Railroads” of World War One, complete with Baldwin steam engines. Those who rode it called it the “Toonerville Trolley.”
The Kennedy family had a kind-of large golf cart called the Toonerville Trolley to ferry their many children around the Hyannisport compound. There’s pictures of it on Pinterest; I’m not able to put a link here. I do recall that it was sold about 30 years ago and likely is in a museum today.
I do recall some silent black and white cartoons of the TT when I was a kid.
From Mike Mike Mike re: Yonkers ( flip last and second last articles… my bad… Miningman
Fontaine Fox
https://ia800900.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/33/items/the-saturday-evening-post-1934-11-24/the-saturday-evening-post-1934-11-24_jp2.zip&file=the-saturday-evening-post-1934-11-24_jp2/the-saturday-evening-post-1934-11-24_0045.jp2&scale=1&rotate=0
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/O1QAAOSwaadarQ-2/s-l1600.jpg
Pelham Toonerville Trolley photo
http://historicpelham.blogspot.com/2018/03/more-on-extension-of-pelham-manor.html
Wow, all of the above is incredible!
Thanks Mike for finding it all, and Vince for passing it on!
My late father-in-law, Lady Firestorm’s dad, would have loved all this. He was a Yonkers boy and a lifelong railfan, and any “Steel wheel on steel rail” goings on in Westchester County that he didn’t know about never happened to begin with, his knowledge of the area was that good!
Kind of like Dave Klepper. What David doesn’t know about never happened either!
Found some Pelham trolley information myself…
https://historicpelham.blogspot.com/2016/06/where-did-trolleys-run-in-town-of-pelham.html
I’m continually amazed by the old trolley systems, they seemed to go everywhere, and then, to use a Lucius Beebe phrase, they “…vanished like the snows of yesteryear.”
What a shame. What a loss.
Aside from that. are we having fun here or what? [swg]
We sure are!
The Toonerville stuff is more than fascinating. The photo of the Pelham streetcar c. 1940 really captures my attention because it seems like such a beautiful neighborhood even on a crappy day. How I’d enjoy being able to just “walk into” that scene.
Does anyone else here recall a GM marketing campaign of only a few (10?) years ago claiming, in essence, before automobiles, no one in the USA could travel anywhere? I continue to think that streetcars & interurbans (and cable cars!) were/are just so cool.
Thank you Miningman for giving us such a trove of cartoons and information.
I never would have guessed that Pelham, hard on the city limits of New York City, would have been the inspiration for such a bucolic trolley line creation as Toonerville.
As long as we’re saying that “the Pelhams” (I love that sign on I-95) was a surprising setting for the bucolic Toonerville Trolley, let’s add another NYC suburb to that list. It seems that George M. Cohan found New Rochelle to be equally rural, full of “reubens” and “jays.” And only Forty-Five Minutes From Broadway!
That was interesting. I didn’t know Cohan was referring to New Rochelle in the song, but then I’ve only heard the chorus up to now.
I always assumed “45 Minutes From Broadway” was somewhere up the New York Central’s Hudson River Line.
Then again, in 1905 there were still quite a few rural and semi-rural areas left in the greater New York City area. The 'burbs were just a-borning at that time and things were starting to change.
Wayne- Haven’t you seen “Yankee Doodle Dandy?” New Rochelle is mentioned by Fay Templeton to George and then he whipped out the song on a piano.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qydYuLlHdkQ
One of my all-time favourite movies, with my all-time favourite actor, James Cagney!
I have. I forgot. Silly me. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!
And I’ve seen that movie so often I can darn near do Cagney’s numbers from “Little Johnny Jones” and “George Washington Junior” by heart!
Jimmy wasn’t an actor in that film, he was a force of nature! Best movie actor ever!
But continuing with my “Burbs a-borning” thought, I remembered that ten years after “45 Minutes” there’d be another song. A commuter song!
And here it is…
Good stuff! I don’t need to mention Charlie on the MTA, do I? Besides that tune from Soupy Sales we discussed a few years ago, it’s the only subway song I know about, unless you count the jingle about the world’s fair in 1964.