Cleveland Railway (Ohio)

A PCC streetcar in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1950s

The Cleveland Railway Company was the public transit operator in Cleveland, Ohio, from 1910 to 1942.

Transit operations were later passed over to the Cleveland Transit System, the precursor to the current Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority. The company owned a fleet of PCC streetcars.

Though National City Lines never owned the system in Cleveland, General Motors did negotiate the sale of buses to the city, resulting in the shutdown of the streetcar system. In Cleveland, complaints were made to the FBI after the mayor and city councilors were seen driving around in new General Motors cars. Mayor Raymond T. Miller did receive a new car within a month of General Motors' winning the contract for new buses. The FBI refused to investigate based on high-profile nature of the people targeted. The Cleveland streetcars were sold to the Toronto Transit Commission, where they remained in service for thirty years until 1982. Others were sold to the Berlin and Waterloo Street Railway Company.

Fleet

Cleveland street railways, 1900

• St. Louis Car Company PCC A11
• Marmon-Herrington TC48-T5 and TC44-T7 trolleybus

See also

• National City Lines - A company owned by gas and car companies (including General Motors that targeted streetcar systems for shutdown.
• Great American streetcar conspiracy
• Northern Ohio Railway Museum

References

• History Detectives - PBS Television show, has an episode about the Cleveland streetcar system.
• Encyclopedia of Cleveland History entry