Last year, when Tony Hall pulled the lever of the vintage Newark trolley he spent more than 50 years restoring, it nudged forward only a few meters. But it transported him many decades to the past.
Hall, who founded the North Jersey Electric Railway Historical Society, has been trying to get the 1917 trolley — Public Service 2651 — into working condition. Later this year, after the final touches are put on the 30-ton car, it will head to the Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven where visitors will be able to ride the trolley on more than a mile of tracks.
“It’s been my life’s work,” said Hall, 89, a retired television news editor.
Born in 1937, Hall, who grew up in Rahway, had his first experience riding a Public Service trolley while on a shopping trip in Newark at the Kresge department store, which had a storefront in the below-ground trolley station on Broad Street.
“I used to light up whenever I saw the trolley,” Hall said.
After seeing PS 2651 up close with a spiffy yellow paint job, new Public Service decal, and freshly shellacked rattan chairs, you’ll find it hard to believe that Hall found the trolley — just the outer shell — in a backyard in Long Valley in 1973. He bought it for $100 from a couple who had been living inside it. The trolley’s steel frame ensured its survival over the years. But the fact that it hadn’t been sold for scrap metal was a miracle in itself.
In 1949, when the Public Service Railway Company discontinued the trolleys in favor of diesel buses, many of the cars were cut up for scrap metal. The rare ones that survived often served an unusual purpose.
“A few of them survived and became homes for G.I.s returning from World War II,” Hall said.
In the early 1900s, there were only two ways to travel — the trolley or the horse and buggy. At its peak, the Public Service Railway operated more than 900 miles of tracks in New Jersey. Historians have long suspected that the demise of trolleys was hastened by the meddling of large corporations like General Motors. That is the subject of the PBS documentary Taken for a Ride.
Since 1973, when Hall bought the trolley, it has moved around to locations sympathetic to the historical society’s effort to restore it. It spent 25 years at the Black River & Western Railroad in Ringoes and 17 years at the Philipsburg Railroad Historians Museum. Nine years ago, it arrived at Kinkishariyo International in Piscataway.
One of the challenges the historical society faced over the years was trying to find parts that are no longer manufactured. The heater, salvaged from vintage Philadelphia Market-Frankfort Line subway car, was installed in the PS 2651 and will be functional. The headlights were hiding in a church for decades. The destination signs, which read “Caldwell” and “Secaucus,” were recycled from old trolleys.
“We have nine bells here and everyone is different,” said Bill Alcott, a volunteer and former superintendent for the Metropolitan Transit Authority.
The only other organization that Hall knows that has successfully restored a Public Service trolley is the Shore Line Trolley Museum — they have two others. That is why his heart was set on the trolley car going there and the museum donated nearly $100,000 to the restoration effort.
“I thought this would complete their collection,” Hall said. “The trolley will be able to talk to its cousins.”
