‘Music as You Ride’ Fails to Save Original WHAV-FM in 1952 Editor’s note: A version of this story originally appeared in a WHAV newsletter May 17, 2010. Additional photograph below. The original FM incarnation of WHAV was a relatively short-lived affair of about only four years. It was conceived under difficult circumstances, lived in painful […]
Meeting one of Washington s first Black streetcar drivers washingtonpost.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from washingtonpost.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
In a previous blog post, we told you about the history of the District s original streetcar system, which dated back to the 1860s when the coaches were pulled by horses. After going electric in the last decade of the 19th century, the streetcars quickly became a crucial part of transportation in the nation s capital, just as they were in other cities across the country.
But Washington s system which gradually coalesced from a hodgepodge of small companies into a single entity, the sprawling Capital Transit Co. in 1933 faced special problems. One dilemma was Congress insistence that the power source be buried underground between the tracks. That made the system especially vulnerable to snow, ice, and summertime heat expansion of the metal slots into which the cars plows were plugged in, which sometimes prevented them from drawing power and led to congestion-causing breakdowns. The Demands of routine maintenance were relentless, transportation historian Robert C. Post writes.