uptown trolley

Yesterday I ventured out to uptown to record a trolley for The Sound Collector's club. The trolley I was after was one of the restored mckinney ave trolleys, and I found pretty much what I was after.

The trolley is free to ride and makes its entire circuit in about 40 minutes. when I got onboard the conductor said "hello" to everyone, and then rolled us down the rails. He had a footpedal that would ring the bell before he took off from a stop, and the trolley had pretty nice sounding airbrakes as well. The door opened in a classical bus/trolley lever move and had a nice old sounding squeak to it.

Because I picked a sunday afternoon to do my recording I ended up on a pretty busy trolley, with lots of people getting on and off at every stop. I never had a stop on the entire circuit that didn't have kids on it.

At the end of the tracks near cityplace we all changed our (ancient creaky wooden seats) over to the opposite direction by moving the back to the other side on a hinge, resulting in us sitting in the same seats but facing the opposite direction.

That trolley is a thoroughly interesting sounding car because of just how creaky and squeaky it all is, and I really need to charter the thing to get a proper recording done. All in all it was good fun though, and is a treasure sitting right there in my own backyard.