About Scott Molloy

Rhode Island once had a mass transit system that crisscrossed the state. Workers took horsecars and electric streetcars from their tenements to the mills and factories during the week. On …
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The pioneering Union (Horse) Railroad Company, Rhode Island’s largest mass transit carrier, survived several competitive scares in the late 1880s. The town of Woonsocket had hosted the first regular electric …
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Building of the Providence Cable Tramway in 1889 fascinated Rhode Islanders. A power house on South Angell Street, near the Seekonk River, pulled 17,000 feet of cable more than an …
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The character and deportment of the Union Railroad’s drivers and conductors won the carrier legions of patrons. The horsecar enterprise, however, was an urban system that operated within a few …
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Passengers and carmen enjoyed a close, personal rapport during the horsecar period. Despite a company prohibition against “unnecessary conversation with passengers,” both drivers and conductors cultivated a clientele almost like …
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The Sprague Brothers’ Union (Horse) Railroad decided to hire the best available personnel by paying generous wages. Horsecar workers received a two-dollar-a-day salary at the inception of service in 1864. …
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Providence was ready to experiment with a new form of transportation at the end of the Civil War, a means of travel popularized in several other Metropolitan areas. New York …
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As the stagecoach disappeared from the urban scene with bittersweet memories for drivers and passengers, it was replaced temporarily by the next stage in the evolution of local mass transit—the …
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Most public bus routes that crisscross Rhode Island today overlay track beds that once supported-electric trolleys and horsecars. Before the railways, the rickety omnibus and its rough and tumble predecessor, …
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Two thousand workers marched in to history 125 years ago when they participated in the state’s first Labor Day parade in 1893 in Providence, while a crowd of ten thousand …
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