After interurban service to Dallas ended in 1934, Northern Texas Traction Company’s car no. 25 was sold and converted into a residence on Eagle Mountain Lake (see Part 1). Lee Lavell of the T transit system and North Texas Historic Transportation said NTHT members, with the help of a few T employees, required about five years to restore the car and get it back onto its wheels.
Car no. 25 is on display at the Intermodal Transportation Center downtown. Any restoration project involves scavenger hunts to find needed parts. NTHT found the trucks (motor, drive train, and wheel assemblies) for car no. 25 on a scrapped car in Indiana.
Two closer views of car no. 25.
Seats of restored car no. 25. (Photo by Lee Lavell.)
Overhead lights and ad placards of car no. 25. (Photo by Lee Lavell.)
Real wood, real shiny. (Photo by Lee Lavell.)
A stained-glass window of car no. 25.
A plaque beside car no. 25 lists people involved in the car’s restoration.
With new paint outside and polished wood inside, in 2002 the car was delivered to the ITC, where it is the centerpiece of Fort Worth’s ground-transportation hub. It sits there as the patriarch of local mass transit, the point where city buses, Greyhound buses, taxi cabs, automobiles, the Trinity Railway Express, and Amtrak trains converge. Car no. 25 probably doesn’t even miss the lake.
Great job, Mike. Special well done to the restoration team. Real good photo work. And now for the rest of the story. Time for phase 2. Put it on the street … up and running. Find the missing cars. Do the same. Have a real trolley system. Make it solar, get Al Gore to foot the bill. We should get blueprints to build more of these. Great work, Mike.
Thanks, Earl. Woulda been fun to ride between Fort Worth and Dallas when there was still some open country between them.
My grandmother sang the praises of the Interurban throughout my childhood. I think she was right.
It was a big part of daily life for thousands of people not that long ago. Now you have to know where to look to see evidence that it ever existed at all.