From the Moment I Saw It I Fell

image Tina Urso McDaniel 2018

My dad was from a city that’s so steeped in train history, it’s one of the squares on Monopoly, so a love of trains was bred into me from the start. Arriving in Seattle in late 1999 to an apartment just a block from the Waterfront Streetcar, it was inevitable that I would immediately fall in love.

I knew right away of course, that it was intended almost exclusively for the use of tourists. I also knew from the informational brochure that not only was the streetcar not a historical fixture of Seattle (having begun its life only in 1982), but it was a relic from the beginning, put together with old and unwanted 1920s-era trolley cars from Australia, brought here by a dreamer named George Benson, who envisioned running them along the waterfront.

These ridiculous facts really only made me love the streetcar and my newly adopted city even more. What kind of city supports the crazy, old-fashioned, and impractical dreams of an old train-loving man enough to get together the funding, resources, and will to actually build something like this? Obviously, I had chosen the right place.

The train cars themselves were beautiful. Old hand-crafted cars made of wood and brass, with large windows that opened and a great-sounding old brass bell. Just sitting in the car waiting for the trip to start was a lovely sensory experience. The creak & smell of the wood, the warmth of being enclosed in it all around, the smell of salty air through the windows. Add to that the leisurely pace of the train and passengers, the breathtaking water and mountain views that every Seattleite loves this city for, and the usual pleasant rhythm and rocking of any train, and I can still imagine few more enjoyable ways to travel across town.

The other things keeping the streetcar close to my heart grew over time. Even after I moved from my original apartment, there were two stops just a few blocks down the hill from my home. And the two primary locations anchoring near each end of the streetcar line ended up being two of my most favorite places in the city: Myrtle Edwards Park at one end, and The Elliott Bay Book Company at the other.

Even though in those days, with a downtown free-ride zone, it would always have been more efficient and cheaper to just take the bus down 1st Avenue from my house to EBB, my husband and I made it a ritual to always take the streetcar on our weekend trips to the bookstore. Those trips still rest in my mind as the most perfect way to spend a day.

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The waterfront streetcar today is a complete nonentity. After its “suspension” in 2005, the city held out the idea for years that it might be re-instituted at any moment, but it’s clear by now that will never be happening. The tracks were literally ripped out in 2012, and almost all of the stations dismantled. All but two of the cars were recently sold to St. Louis, and the current talk is to possibly find a way to recirculate the remaining cars into the now actually practical streetcar system that has since been built in other areas of town.

Strangely, with the exception of the ID stop and the old EBB stop in Pioneer Square, both which have been repurposed for the new line (going in the opposite direction) the only direct physical relics remaining seem to be a couple of streetcar crossing signs inexplicably left standing and well-maintained near a couple of the old stops, leaving most passersby to probably assume they are referring to the heavy rail tracks nearby.

There are two other legacies indirectly carrying the streetcar’s history forward to today. One is the city’s Metro Route 99 (once wrapped to look like and literally called the Waterfront Streetcar Line), a free-fare bus that had been originally put in place as a temporary stopgap until the streetcar was reinstated. The wraps and the name were removed in 2011, and half the route was moved to 1st Avenue. The route number and a memorial page on Metro’s website are now the only remaining reference to the original.

The second legacy is a private tour operator named Emerald City Trolley, which operates tourist trolley buses that drive around downtown in the warmer months. They make no direct references to the streetcar line, but the buses literally look like the old wooden streetcars, in the exact same paint scheme, including being open-air and made of wood and brass.

I have alot of conflict over the old trolley. On the one hand, I continue to be sad about its loss every time I go down to the waterfront, a feeling which becomes particularly acute whenever I pass one of those old signs, which I like to think were left there purposely by some sentimental city workers charged with their removal. On the other hand, not only has my primary reason for taking it disappeared (EBB having moved up the hill to its current location around the same time the trolley was mothballed), but I understand that at this juncture to bring it back as it was would be a pointless and expensive exercise in nostalgia. I’m still annoyed at the way the city handled the “temporary” removal of the streetcar mainly due to their poor planning when given ample heads-up by Seattle Art Museum during the creation of the Olympic Sculpture Park, which required a trolley-barn relocation. But what’s been done is done.

Now with all the grand plans of a revitalized waterfront after the imminent removal of the Viaduct, I can only wonder if someday new track will be laid in the same exact route to extend the current streetcar line, and hope that on some future day when one of the old cars is pressed into service for ceremonial or car-shortage reasons, that I’ll be onboard.