Center Entrance in Boston - Part 1

By Alfred Barten

I wrote this article for Electric Lines magazine, which published it in their May-June 1992 issue. I’ve omitted a few of their minor edits, reverting to my original manuscript (mostly because the edits didn’t change anything significant, and trying to search them all out seemed unnecessary), added some illustrations and omitted several others because they are no longer available.

This is the first of four parts. - AB
Part 2 - Historical Development
Part 3 - Boston Center Entrance Cars
Part 4 - Boston Center Entrance Car Characteristics




Three-car center-entrance train on Commonwealth Avenue on way to Braves Field, June 15, 1946. Kevin T. Farrell Collection.

Introduction

Center entrance. Those were seductive words to big-city transit operators in 1912 and for nearly a decade afterward. The term referred to a type of streetcar that promised to solve the urban operators' need for fast, safe boarding and exiting of large crowds while assuring complete and efficient collection of fares. The idea of center entrance, nearly as old as the electric trolley itself, found full expression in the pre-World War I era when developments in all-steel body framing and small-motor/small-wheel truck design, together with new schemes for fare collection, set off a flurry of experimentation by car designers looking for the perfect solution. That perfect solution, however, was elusive. All schemes involved tradeoffs of one sort or another, and one factor unforeseen by virtually all designers and managers at the time was the eventual, complete change of streetcars to one-man operation. Few center-entrance designs anticipated, or could be successfully adapted to deal with this development. In the end it proved fatal to the species, though many cars, including Boston's, were used into the 1950s.

In Boston, the West End Street Railway Company tried a center-entrance double-decked car in 1891, just three years after Frank Sprague's successful demonstration in Richmond, Virginia, of an electric streetcar system. Known as the Pullman Sessions car after its creators, George M. Pullman and H.H. Sessions, it was loaned by the Pullman Palace Car Company for a forty-day trial period. The car was popular with the riding public but deemed unsatisfactory for regular service because of its difficult-to-climb spiral stairs to the open-roofed upper deck. Little is known of the car after its trial.


Pullman double-decker tried in Boston, 1991. (Note reversed pole.)
Electric Railway Journal.

Center-entrance cars in the conventional sense were late in coming to Boston. This city, where innovative and sound transit planning have been hallmarks since the continent's first transit tunnel opened there in 1897, pursued its own unique (and justifiable) course in 1912 and the years immediately following, as its transit planners recycled outmoded single- and double-truck box cars into the world's first successful articulated cars - forerunners of today's articulateds in use around the globe. When Boston finally entered the mainstream center-entrance arena, first with trailers in late 1914 and then with multiple-unit (MU) motor cars in 1916, the articulated car program could be seen as having been a valuable learning ground.

In all, Boston's transit operator and successor to the West End Street Railway, the Boston Elevated Railway Company, ordered 405 center-entrance motor cars from 1916 through 1920. The first 300 were capable of MU train operation and quickly became the mainstays of all the line's heavily trafficked routes. The center-entrance cars in general dominated the system until the new streamlined Presidents' Conference Committee (PCC) cars arrived in the 1940s. Even then the center-entrance cars, slated for retirement, were pressed into service to handle the added wartime traffic that resulted when many would-be drivers turned to public transportation because autos and gasoline were in short supply. After the war, the MU cars were kept on for use in special trains to transport after-game sporting event crowds.

By 1916, when Boston ordered its first center-entrance cars, the parameters of center-entrance design had been pretty well explored. Still, Boston managed a few new tricks with its center-entrance cars, some carried over from developments in the articulated-car program. Most noticeable were the unusual reversed trolley poles. By turning the poles so they pointed toward the center of the car, the conductor could raise or lower them via roof hatches above his central position without having to leave the car.


O-scale model by Richard S. Harris built from a Q-Car kit. Photo by Richard S. Harris.

But the reversed poles paled visually in comparison to the center-entrance car's general appearance, which at best could be called homely. The car had a prehistoric look that only its mother could love - angular, steel-plated, and sow-bellied - something like a mechanical rhinoceros. One pundit mused that if the center-entrance trains had been running in 1776, just the sight of them would have kept the British from attacking Boston.

The car's swollen, low-slung appearance was accentuated by the in-sloping sides above the belt line. This feature, typical of Boston cars, was necessitated by tight clearances in the line's older, narrow tunnels. As if the car's heavy center were not noticeable enough, the large motorized bi-parting center doors drew further attention by being outside-hung like hangar doors. Above, the overhead door tracks were plainly visible, while from behind the closed doors the pivoted linkage arms projected out in all their mechanical splendor.

The car's functional, steel-plated style conjured images of sweaty, muscular arms wielding cutting torches and riveting guns in a smoky atmosphere punctuated with the hot, flickering flames of a forge. Yet the car's purposeful, unpretentious design bred endearment. It was the kind of functional form-giving that caught the imaginations of the early modern architects, like Walter Gropius, who based their famous international style of architecture on honest expression.

To see a Boston center-entrance car was to know its purpose. The cars were people movers, clear and simple. And they performed as advertised, earning their reputation as "crowd eaters" or "crowd swallowers." Running in trains of two or three, they could clear out large after-game or special-event crowds at Boston's Fenway Park, Braves' Field, or Boston Garden in short order, swallow up subway platformfuls of rush hour commuters, or yardfuls of schoolchildren.

Next page >
Part 2 - Historical Development
Part 3 - Boston Center Entrance Cars
Part 4 - Boston Center Entrance Car Characteristics