Lakeville Trolley Scare, 1910

Find it difficult to retrieve change you drop down between the seat and the console in your car? Well here’s a bit of unnerving news from 1910 Lakeville.

Dynamite Scare.

Passengers Fled from Car Near Lakeville.

Workmen Dropped Stick of Explosive, but No One Hurt.

Excitement prevailed on the electric car from Elliott’s Corner [East Taunton] to the Lakeville town house [October 31] afternoon, when it was discovered that a workman who was on his way to New Bedford had dropped a stick of dynamite between the window sash and the car seat. The stick of the explosive was small and just fitted in the slot where the window slides down between the side panels of the car.

It was noticed that the workman was trying to recover something from the small cavity, and when asked by conductor Cornell what he was doing he answered that he had dropped a stick of dynamite in there.

The passengers at once became panic-stricken. Motorman Frazer and the conductor thought of the wires concealed there and saw visions of the car and passengers going up in the air. It was decided to stop the car and allow the passengers to walk to the town house, a short distance away.

The car was run slowly to the car barn five miles away, extra precaution being taken against any great jar. Master mechanic Edward Robinson fished the stick out with a wire, and it was exploded in the woods in the rear of the station.

The passengers, after recovering from their fright, took the next car to [Middleborough]. Traffic was delayed only a short time while a car was being substituted.

Illustration:
Lakeville trolley car with Lakeville Town House in the background, c. 1900. The trolley mentioned in the article would have been an enclosed trolley that typically replaced the open trolley pictured here which was used during the warmer months.

Source:
Boston Globe, "Dynamite Scare", November 1, 1910.

Drifts 10 Feet High, 1904

As is the case today, snowstorms a century ago had the ability to cripple the transportation network, bringing both street railways and steam railroads to a standstill.  One such storm in mid-December 1904 witnessed tall drifts that covered rail lines, temporarily disrupting service until plows could clear them.

Country About Middleboro Effectively Tied Up by the Snow and Roads Open Slowly.

MIDDLEBORO, Dec. 18 - The country about here is more effectively tied up, as a result of the northeast snow storm last night, than since the big November storm in 1898.

Snow more than a foot deep on the level has drifted as high as 10 feet and has completely blocked some of the outside roads.  It may be a couple of days before they are broken out.

For the third time in a week the electric roads have had to dig themselves out.  The tracks were banked high in some places by snow thrown from the tracks earlier, and today's snow was with difficulty got out of the way.

The Old Colony [street rail]road had its big rotary plow out in charge of Supt. J. H. Hayes, and made trips all night to and from the four corners to the car house at Lakeville.

Blinding snow swept across lake Assawampsett, carried by the high northeaster, and packed hard on the tracks along the lake shore for more than a mile.  In these big drifts the rotary was given all the work it was capable of to keep the way open.  A nose plow was run with it to scrape the snow which the rotary left on the tracks.

No effort was made till nearly nightfall today to run the passenger cars.

The East Taunton road was the first to get passenger cars through, that being shortly after 11 this morning.  Its plows encountered drifts nearly as high as a car in the section through North Lakeville.

Illustration:
Trolley with Plow, South Main Street, Middleborough, MA, photograph, early 20th century.

Source:
"Drifts 10 Feet High", Brockton Enterprise, December 18, 1904.

Snow-Bound Trolley, 1910

A severe winter storm in January, 1910, was responsible for temporarily disrupting the community's everyday activities. Here, a trolley car on the electric line to Onset is seen stalled midway up Barden Hill. At the left is the Caswell House which stands on the corner of Wareham and New Water Streets. A crew of men is busy clearing the tracks. Such crews were accustomed to keeping the street railways passable, but frequently winter storms forced the suspension of service on the electrics, and sometimes worse. In February, 1913, icing of the tracks caused the derailment of one of the Taunton and Buzzards Bay Street Railway Company's trolleys in Middleborough.