Nyarlathotep Part 5: Trolleys

Lovecraft loved trolleys. On his 21st birthday he rode them all day long. Soon, however, America's lust for automobiles crushed the trolley cars.

"..we saw a tram-car, lone, windowless, dilapidated, and almost on its side." [1]



1 Joshi [2] relates this 1927 dream, "After walking some distance, I encounter's the rusty tracks of a street-railway, & worm-eaten poles which still held the limp and sagging trolley wire. Following this line, I soon came upon a yellow, vestibuled car numbered 1852 - of a plain, double-trucked type common from 1900-1910." [3]

2 The Call of Cthulhu and other weird stories, Penguin, 1999, p. 370, note. 4

3 This date is interesting. The references I've found show "green" trolleys in the earleist days, and "yellowish" cars in the latter days.










^1910





















^1922, yellow?













^1911