A Relic of Baltimore's Cable Car Era

A Relic of Baltimore's Cable Car Era. , This wheel belonged to the underground infrastructure of Baltimore's short-lived cable car system., Cable cars, seen as a vast improvement over horse-powered streetcars, arrived in Baltimore in 1891 to great fanfare. Invented in San Francisco in the 1870s, the cars rode atop a continuously moving underground cable that ran between the cable car tracks. To start or stop the cable car, the car's "gripman" operated a mechanical grip that grabbed or released the ever-moving cable., Moving at a speed of 6 to 11 miles per our (double the speed of the horsecar), the cable system was powered by steam engines located in six powerhouses strategically placed around the city., Baltimore's cable car system quickly became obsolete as streetcar companies discovered the more efficient and less costly overhead electric streetcar, first used in Richmond in 1888. Electric streetcars replaced cable cars in Baltimore in 1898. You can learn the fascinating history of Baltimore's railway system in our Visitor Center., [Captions:] , The Baltimore Traction Company opened this cable powerhouse in 1892 in the vacant Epworth Methodist Church (no longer standing) at Gilmor and Mosher streets. , Sketch from Street Railway Journal, March 1894, (left) Workers remove the wheel from an underground vault beneath Paca Street, where it was discovered in 1974. (In the sketch above, the wheel can be seen in the foreground, as part of a mechanism that guided the cable onto its route.) , Photo by Ralph J. Kueppers, (center) Cable car sitting atop an inspection pit in a streetcar barn, 1890s. , L.C. Mueller Collection, BSM, (right) Cable car on the Gay Street line, 1890s. , BSM, This map shows the city's cable car system, consisting of five routes operated by two companies. The Lanvale Street powerhouse ("p.h." on the map) still exists, just blocks from the museum. Now known as the Charles Theatre, its facade displays the company logo, "BCPR." , Map reprinted from The Cable Car in America by George Hilton (1971) , Charles Theatre photo courtesy of Baltimore Heritage