Abandoned Trolley Cars 🚎 Red Hook, Brooklyn -

Back in 2009 I visited the trolley cars that were withering away behind the Fairway in Brooklyn’s Red Hook. Though I took a few photos of them at the time, I assumed they’d be long gone as Brooklyn’s waterfronts continue to transform. But on a recent ferry ride, I saw one of the trollies in the distance as the ferry chopped past on the river. Soon thereafter I was in front of one of the trolley cars again… trying to crop out the many folks basking in the glorious day.

Where there once stood several trolley cars, now there is one: this Green Line trolley from Boston. In 2014 a couple of the trollies parked on the waterfront were trucked away, including the one I had posed with in 2009.

So why on Earth were these historical cars sitting on the waterfront? The short of it is that a man from Flatbush named Bob Diamond had hopes of putting trollies back on the streets of Brooklyn using the existing infrastructure. Because streetcars ran about Brooklyn and Queens from the early 1900’s to a final ride in 1956. By that time the subway was getting all of the City’s attention and ridership, making many of the streetcar’s routes obsolete. (More detailed history here.)

Then this Bob Diamond fellow starting collecting trolley cars in the 1980’s. He had a dream: The cars, hailing from Boston, Ohio and Norway, would run across Brooklyn’s waterfront once again–ridding it of automobile traffic. After years of pouring his passion into the project, a trolley did run briefly! (Source) However, it was short-lived. After conflicts with volunteers, the loss of the rent-free space the trollies occupied and the loss of city funding, Diamond’s dream could not be sustained. In 2004 the tracks were officially paved over.