Seashore Trolley Museum
Seashore Trolley Museum
In the late 1800s, the United States experienced a boom in electric railway systems. The electric trolleys that replaced horse-drawn ones were cheaper, cleaner, more reliable, and could travel farther. Even in Maine, this cutting-edge transportation technology was used to connect communities and transport mill workers and tourists. But the heyday of electric trolleys was short: by the 1940s they had mostly been replaced by automobiles and gas-powered buses.
In 1939, a group of trolley fans learned that the Biddeford and Saco Railroad was replacing its trolley car fleet with motor buses and approached the company about purchasing a car. The railroad agreed to the sale of one car. Its #31 car, a 12-bench open trolley, was the first acquisition of what became the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport.
In the years since buying #31, the museum, which is the first and largest electric railway museum in the world, has added more than 250 vehicles to its collection, including streetcars, rapid transit cars, buses, and a large model railroad recreating Maine landscapes along the Maine Central Railroad.
Also among its collection are ten trolley and railroad cars that historically operated in Maine that are listed as a group on the National Register of Historic Places and one of the motor buses that replaced the #31 trolley car. The museum’s model railroad building is open to the public year-round and the rest of the 350-acre campus is open seasonally.
