Getting around for 148 years

The Hamilton Street Railway began with six cars that were pulled by horses

Hamilton’s transit system, The Hamilton Street Railway, began with a meeting in 1873 among citizens who believed if railway systems could operate in Toronto and Buffalo, there ought to be one in Hamilton as well.

The Hamilton Street Railway Co. was incorporated later that year.

Hamilton’s public transit system is still known as the Hamilton Street Railway, even though it doesn’t use rail any more. It’s a system of diesel and natural gas buses today.

The city at one time had a vast, efficient network of electric-powered street cars. HSR History

In 1874, the company started laying track on James Street North from Stuart Street to King Street. Six cars “with all the latest improvements” were ordered. The cars could hold a maximum of 14 passengers and were pulled by horses.

By 1892, electricity had arrived. The HSR sold its horses, and streetcars used electric power. There were also incline railways that would take Hamiltonians up and down the Mountain.

Through the early 1900s, Hamilton was a public transit user’s dream. Retired Dofasco steelworker Joseph Hruska Sr., 81, told The Spectator in an interview in 2011 that he remembered electric streetcars in the 1930s and ’40s.

But then the automobile spoiled it all, and streetcars and rails were seen to be getting in the way of the progress.

“It’s not well remembered, but Hamilton was at the centre of the largest radial rail network in Canada. Electric lines radiated to Dundas, Oakville, Grimsby and Brantford at the start of the 20th century,” said Tom Luton, a public transit expert who runs an extensive website devoted to the history of public transit in Hamilton.

Rail cars that ran between Hamilton and the outlying communities used electricity from overhead lines, as did a vast system of intracity streetcars that were part of the beltline.

“What the city had in the past in terms of the streetcar network, the radial network and what has been lost over the years is enough to boggle the mind,” said Luton.

It was true horsepower when the HSR began.

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Hamilton Street Railway operators standing in front of car 400 on the York Street route, ca. 1930.