Too Late!

I first heard about Trolleyville USA sometime in the early years of the 21st century. It was a trolley museum of sorts up near Cleveland, a collection of privately-owned vintage trolleys that ran on a stretch of track that had been laid out when a mobile home park had been opened, sometime after World War Two. Unfortunately, their web site was not frequently updated, and when I checked it out I kept finding notices about closings, reopenings, temporary suspensions of services, etc. For years whenever I thought of it and checked their web site, the web site was either offline, years out of date, or proclaimed a temporary closure.

One day in 2006, almost exactly eleven years ago, I decided to drive up to that neck of the woods and see for myself what the story was. That's about 3.5 hours of driving, so I had a few other things on my virtual agenda if Trolleyville didn't pan out. And in fact, it didn't.

Interurban trolley car (formerly Chicago Aurora & Elgin 453) being prepared
for shipment from the defunct Trolleyville USA on March 29, 2006.

I arrived to find all operations shut down, the storefront office/station empty, and collection being hauled off. Their immediate destination was a dingy warehouse on the Cleveland lakefront, but that's a story for another day.