Alton
Alton, Granite & St. Louis Traction Co.
Alton, located 25 miles north of St. Louis along the Mississippi River and known as the "Bluff City", in one of the hillest cities in the United States, second to San Francisco.  Public transit started with horsecar in Alton in 1868 and electric streetcars taking over in 1893.  There were several Alton streetcar company which finally became the Alton Granite & St. Louis Traction Company in 1904.  The company went into receivership in August 1920 because of major financial problems.  The first group of Birney streetcars arrived in April 1921, but they could not halt the downward earnings that resulted from automobile and concrete highway competition, and the company was broken up by court order, with the Alton Railway Company taking over the Alton streetcar system on December 1, 1926.  In 1930, fourteen second-hand Birney streetcars from Galesburg, Illinois, replaced the remaining original Birney streetcars which were in deploreable condition.  On July 1, 1930, the Illinois Power & Light Corporation purchased the system along with the other Alton utilities, and the Illinois Terminal Transportation Company purchased  the transit properties on March 1, 1931.  Nowever, because of the Depression, patronage continued to drop and the transit system continued to operate at a loss.  Buses gradually took over, with streetcar service on the last 10 miles of track on Second Street east to Wood River ending on August 27, 1936.  Birney 170 (not operable) currently is preserved at the Illinois Railway Museum.
Streetcar 23 on the private-right-of-way at the entrance to
Rock Spring Park on the North Alton line.
c1910
Stephen M. Scalzo collection Back to Illinois Page
State-by-state listings
Back to Main Page