Center Entrance in Boston - Part 1, Continued
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Part 2 - Historical Development
Part 3 - Boston Center Entrance Cars
Part 4 - Boston Center Entrance Car Characteristics





Number 6116 brand new at Codman Square, Dorchester, Sept. 8, 1919. Kevin T. Farrell Collection.

The children from some of Boston's large schools often rode the multiple-car trains in segregated fashion - girls in one car and boys in another. Kevin Farrell, whose father was a center-entrance car conductor, tells a story of a boy leaning through the end window of one car into the front window of the following "girls' car" to empty a bag full of live mice. As expected, pandemonium broke loose.

"The center-entrance car was the classic, classic Boston car," exclaims George Sanborn, a trustee of the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, Maine, and Reference Librarian at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's (MBTA) State Transportation Library in Boston. "It was to Boston like baked beans, cod, and Fanueil Hall are," he adds. It was "King of the Road."

To many Bostonians, the familiar cars symbolized reliability and constancy. "They were everywhere," recalls Joe Corliss, who rode them as a schoolboy. Now retired, Joe is Librarian at the Seashore Trolley Museum, where the only three remaining Boston center-entrance cars reside. Two cars, numbers 6131 and 6270, are MU types slated for restoration. The third, number 6309, will be kept as a service car if it does not first become a source of spare parts for the other two. It was the last non-MU center-entrance car in passenger service when it was converted to sand/salt use in 1945.

If a train of center-entrance cars reminds one of high-platform rapid transit trains, it should be no surprise. Danny Cohen, who specializes in subway car restoration at the Seashore Trolley Museum when he isn't at his job as an inspector on the Green Line (light rail division) at the MBTA, observes:

They were really rapid transit cars that ran on the street. When the East Boston Tunnel was converted from streetcar to rapid transit use [in 1924], the new cars which replaced the center-entrance cars there were mechanically and electrically - doors, trucks, motors, controls - very similar.

1. A train of cars permits more rapid operation through congested traffic than do separate cars. This follows because all of the cars in the train go through traffic as a single unit. Other vehicles can interfere less with a train than with a corresponding number of single units, and a single signal from a traffic officer insures passage of the entire train. The tendency of single units in heavy traffic is to bunch; in other words, they are forced to form what is essentially a train. This is a condition which suggests train operation.

2. When passenger traffic on a given line is sufficiently heavy to permit train operation without too great an increase in headway, trains can be operated at lower labor cost per car-mile than single units. One motorman operates a train of any desired length, hence the share of his wages chargeable against each car is inversely proportional to the number of cars in the train. This comparison is, of course, with two-man cars, which would usually be operated under traffic conditions favorable to train operations.

3. The train furnishes a flexible transportation unit, the capacity of which can be readily adjusted to service requirements. Whether trains consist of multiple-unit cars or motors and trailers, it is practicable to add or drop cars as the traffic demands and thus keep the equipment in service efficiently.

Experience with center-entrance multiple-unit train operation has shown that dead mileage can be reduced to a minimum by trains that can be turned back on crossovers, not requiring the expense of installation of loops or the operation of the two-car [motor and trailer] units to the end of the line.

Al