S.W. & A. Streetcars

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• Great old pics !! I love seeeing the old streetcars! I only wsh i could've lived in Windsor in the 20's and was able to criss cross the city and all the neighbourhoods on electric transit.

  Andrew, is there a location for the first pic? Nice old building peaking out on the right side...

• Fausto...... not just the city and neighbourhoods of Windsor but the whole county.........out to Tecumseh, to A'Burg, and to Essex, Kingsville, Leamington, and in-between. The interurban light rail system serving Essex county (Hydro Electric Railway, WE&LS RR) ended in financial ruin in the early 1930s and has been covered here as well. "Stop 26" is probably the last ghost left from the glory days of light rail transit in Essex county.

• Ahhh.. now 'stop 26' makes sense... I wonder if there are any of these actual streetcars still preserved or stored somewhere in the country and can be brought back/restored and maybe parked at Stop 26?? It would make a reall cool attraction wouldn't it!! ( the real thing even better!!)

• I hate to say this, but there's a good chance they were burned. It was a fairly common way of disposing of unwanted trolley or interurban cars at that time. The interurban business was failing (the Detroit United Railway went down about the same time) so there was no real market for used streetcars.

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiz68/445503869/

• At the end of street cars in Windsor an number of the SW&A car bodies where sold to be used for summer cottages in the county. In fact there is an house in the connty today that has an complete street car as part of the house. This was most likely used first as an cottage. Other SW&A cars where stripped of parts which where used by the SW&A or sold to other systems. What cars that where left where cut up as the bodies where made of steel. When the WE&LS shut down the equipment that was in bad shape was scrap and
  five steel cars where sold to an sysytem in Montreal, the freight engines where sold to Cornwall.
  In the U.S. yes an number of old wood cars where burnt, part of the reason for that was GMC, Firestone and Mobil Oil where buying systems up and converted them to buses as fast as they could do so. Street cars didn't used gas, oil, tires, but buses did. That is the reason why street cars systems disappeared so fast.

• Those old photos of Windsor's beautiful streetcars make me ashamed of what Windsor has become. Imagine how much better Windsor would be if we had real leaders running the city and not that bunch of clowns in charge at city hall.

• Does anyone remember the abandoned streetcar that sat behind the old kelsey hayes plant on mcdougall? there was a pair of train tracks that ran behind kelsey hayes and an old streetcar that just sat there for years.

• i used to mess around in that thing allllllllll the time! that giant "green" beast with the borded up windows?? wasn't a street car though, that was definitly a passenger trailer of some type. it was also set on fire a million times too but it just seemed to resist it for years. i was actually sad when i went by one day and it was gone. i'm having a fuzzy memory of seeing it either finally burned to the ground, or torn apart by whoever wanted it gone.
  damn shame too, some restoration and alot of love, and it could have been a nice addition to the spirit of windsor.

• Aaron i remember there was an old green heavyweight passenger car parked behind peerless dairy i heard a rail group was trying to find a place for it so they could restore it my first wife lived on the 200 block of frank avenue she said back years ago there was a track than ran along clairview street