The railway industry in and around Schenectady, New York
represents what most industrialized cities were experiencing at the turn of the
twentieth century. The Schenectady Railway Company electrified its streetcar
lines in 1891 - just three years after Frank Sprague's Richmond line began running. From then on,
the city of Schenectady
would be transformed in myriad ways.
Thomas Edison and the General Electric Company (GE) were
quick to see the potential for locating an efficient manufacturing facility in
the upstate New York
community after buying the Schenectady Railway in 1896. Then, the population of
Schenectady was
a mere 13,000 people. By 1903, however, the city had grown exponentially to 53,000
year-round residents. By 1920, there were 90,000 year round residents.
Schenectady's
population explosion can be attributed mainly to two major and growing industries:
the General Electric Company and the American Locomotive Company (A.L.C.O.) But
such rapid growth did not come without a cost.
Trolleys and Traffic
Rush-hour traffic in Schenectady
was a major problem, especially during shift changes. GE soon realized with the
number of shop workers employed at its facility, it was imperative to move first-shift
workers out as quickly as possible so that second-shift workers could enter the
shop quickly.
To solve this problem, General Electric built a dedicated trolley
loop at the entrance of the GE complex so that extra trolley cars could be fed
into the main line of cars without interrupting the regular traffic flow. An
astonishing 3,000 people were loaded and unloaded from the trolley cars in less
than a half an hour. There was always a mad dash for seats on the trolleys
during shift changes, so a rider had to be savvy when it came to claiming a
seat.
Glassblowers at "The Works" (as GE was called at the time)
came up with an ingenious plan. They constructed "stink bombs" by cooking a
mixture of horsehair and butter and sealing the foul concoction in a glass tube.
When an empty trolley car turned through the loop, the workers would throw the stink
bomb through an open window. This guaranteed the glassblowers an empty trolley
at the next stop. It seemed that they were "impervious" to the aroma.
Schenectady's Famous Figures in the Age of Innovation and Industry
Many engineers and entrepreneurs traveled to Schenectady and lived the
trolley life in a quest for innovations and inventions. They also sought to acquire
and improve the latest technologies of the time.
Albert Einstein, Guglielmo Marconi, Harvey Firestone and Henry Ford were some of these
now-famous figures who used the trolley to get around Schenectady and the 450-acre General Electric
facility. There, they worked with Thomas Edison and Dr. Charles P. Steinmetz, who was the
chief engineer at GE for most of his career.
One evening, Henry Ford was to meet with Charles Steinmetz. Ironically,
Mr. Ford took a ride on a Schenectady
streetcar (and not an automobile) to cool down after he became angry with Dr.
Steinmetz, who had forgotten about his meeting with Mr. Ford. Dr. Steinmetz had been working feverishly on a
laboratory experiment and forgotten all about entertaining the irascible
automaker.
By 1903, General Electric, through the research of Charles
Steinmetz and Edison, had debuted a new trolley railway system that was able to
span the distances between cities through the use of AC current and long-distance
trolleys called "interurbans". The best was yet to come.
Editor's Note: Part 10 of this multi-part series will run in
two weeks.
Resources:
Trolleys Down the Mohawk Valley,
Charles Gordon, 1968
Previous Blog Entries in This Series
The American Streetcar (Part 1)
From Stagecoach to Streetcar (Part 2)
From Horse-Drawn Streetcars to Cable Cars (Part 3)
The Birth of the Electric Streetcar (Part 4)
Electric Streetcars and Trolley Technology (Part 5)
Electric
Streetcars: Private Lines and Public Roads (Part 6)
The Rise of the Electric Streetcar (Part 7)
Electric
Streetcars and the Industrial Revolution (Part 8)
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