Trolley cars used to crisscross New Jersey. This restored relic has a curious history

Public Service Trolley Car No. 2651 gleamed in the warehouse lighting. Its charming cream-and-yellow body and Tuscan red striping neatly accentuated its fold-in doors and long wooden frame and its curved ends that look like bay windows.

This 106-year-old relic is a newly restored example of the go-to vehicle that transported New Jerseyans in the early 20th century nearly anywhere in the Garden State for nearly any task, job or errand.

This particular car has lived a life even more fascinating than most — coming out of retirement to shuttle workers to the docks during World War II, and housing a family at one point, before it was recovered and stored for restoration.

The trolley car — No. 2651 — was recently on display at the Kinkisharyo International train repair shop in Piscataway to show off its $350,000 makeover — but really it was on a job interview of sorts, trying to secure its next home.

“All dressed up and no place to go,” said William McKelvey, a transportation fanatic whose nonprofit, Liberty Historic Railway, is among the organizations that have led the effort to recondition the vagabond trolley.

McKelvey hopes 2651’s next assignment isn’t just a shelter, though it certainly needs that to protect its wooden frame and new paint job. McKelvey wants 2651 to roll on the tracks and transport people again in New Jersey, as it was always intended to do — even if only for tourists to take pictures.

Story continues below photo gallery

Perhaps it will leave an imprint on those visitors, especially the train-crazy kids like McKelvey was, who get excited about train travel and how railcars were the gathering place that connected not only individuals to their destinations, but neighbors to one another.

Once a key to thriving urban New Jersey

The trolley once was the key to thriving urban areas all around New Jersey, said Philip Plotch, a Fair Lawn resident, author and principal researcher at the nonprofit Eno Center for Transportation.

“People lived and worked in those areas, they shopped in those areas, people knew each other, people could walk from place to place in thriving downtowns, and there was a real sense of connection to your community — you weren’t reliant on cars,” Plotch said. “That’s the trolley car story.”

Getting 2651 to its next chapter rests in the hands of NJ Transit, Norfolk Southern and the town of Phillipsburg, where McKelvey hopes the trolley can spend its second century giving recreational rides to children and adults, informing them about the unique history of trolley cars and the prominence they once had in the U.S., especially New Jersey.

“We think it would be a wonderful tourism magnet for Phillipsburg,” McKelvey said. “And with the photos of the completed, painted car, we’re hoping we can get them excited enough to move this project along so that we can build a car barn out there.

“There are very few people alive who rode on street cars such as 2651 in New Jersey, but it is a whole new experience for not only grown-ups but children as well … it’s got the sights, the sounds, the trolley gong — everything is totally unique to a trolley car,” he said.

Communities stitched with trolley lines

Car No. 2651 was born in July 1917 at a shop on Plank Road in Newark, built by Public Service Railway, one of the now-defunct transit arms of the energy company known today as PSE&G, or Public Service Electric and Gas.

It was put into service that September at the Roseville Car House, the main storage and repair facility for Newark streetcars at that time and the origin place for many Public Service trolleys that at their height transported 451 million people a year, according to “The Energy People,” a book about the history of PSE&G.

By comparison, NJ Transit’s current system of train lines, bus routes and light rail carried nearly 270 million people annually before the pandemic.

Passenger rail, trolley and bus travel were profitable back then. Large companies like Public Service and Pennsylvania Railroad spared no expense to engineer the most advanced and luxurious rail equipment and built majestic stations, tunnels and bridges with the finest materials and craftsmanship.

Public Service Corp. launched in 1903 and purchased the hodgepodge of trolley systems scattered throughout the state and merged several businesses of electrical lighting and gas. The trifecta business model was symbolized by Public Service’s well-known triangle logo that adorned its transit vehicles.

That decade and the next became the heyday of trolley cars in New Jersey. Public Service eventually accumulated and built 882 miles of track crisscrossing the Garden State from the urban centers of Newark and Jersey City to the Bergen County suburbs and down to Camden and Atlantic City. The lines even connected to cities out of state, including Baltimore and Boston.

“Public Service trolleys were so frequent that their patrons were said not to need shelters, even at the system’s outermost corners,” says the “The Energy People.”

Plotch said the transit lifestyle then was remarkably different from what we know today.

“If you wanted to get to the factory or you wanted to get to the downtown for shopping, to the colleges — our economy really relied upon trolleys,” Plotch said. “You don’t know your neighbors the same way today because you’re just getting in your car. You’re not walking to the trolley, seeing your neighbors, seeing the same people all the time — it was a much more social kind of environment. You just think about what those trolleys meant to the communities.”

Trolleys first to fall amid rise of automobiles

McKelvey, 86, remembers riding trolley cars in the state from about 1946 to 1951.

His recollections are vivid, and his voice is filled with the same childlike excitement as when he rode Public Service vehicles some seven decades ago. He always made sure to grab a seat "right up in the front, eyes wide open.”

McKelvey grew up in Bloomfield and often used the Bloomfield Avenue line. He recalls exciting trips with his mother to Bamberger's in Newark, the sprawling upscale department store, to see its model train display in the lobby around Christmas.

In his early teens, McKelvey opted to take the trolley home from a Boy Scout mission trip in Caldwell.

“We went with the Scout leaders, they took us up in their cars, and I just abandoned them and said, ‘No, that’s all right, I’m riding the trolley back,’” he said, taking it from Caldwell through Verona, Montclair and Glen Ridge to Bloomfield.

Well before McKelvey first started riding trolleys, their downfall was underway, with jitneys beginning to disrupt the trolley business around 1915. Then Public Service began “bustituting” trolley service with new, more flexible bus vehicles in 1923.

By 1929, bus lines surpassed trolleys in revenue, and by the 1950s they fully replaced trolleys, except the Newark City Subway, which is still in operation as NJ Transit’s Newark Light Rail line.

Meanwhile, personal automobiles became more prolific, and they would ultimately be the undoing of profitable public transportation and passenger rail.

Public Service sold what became a money-losing transportation business and properties to the state of New Jersey in 1980, as NJ Transit, a state-subsidized transportation agency, launched.

“We don’t have that same kind of transit service because it’s not profitable, because people are in their cars," Plotch said. "There is this competition that makes it unprofitable.”

New chapters of revival

Even after its prime, the 2651 trolley car found ways to be useful — through some unusual paths.

After spending much of its 23-year career rolling around Essex County on a variety of lines, 2651 was retired in 1940. Two years later, the trolley was pressed back into service to shuttle workers from Journal Square and Exchange Place in Jersey City to the federal shipyards and Western Electric at South Kearny during World War II.

The trolley car was sold in about 1946 to a family that used it as a house while theirs was under construction in Long Valley, in Morris County. After that, 2651 stayed on the property as a playhouse for the family’s children and was eventually used for storage.

It withered away in the outdoor elements for nearly 30 years until it was discovered and acquired by an individual who saw it on the Long Valley property in the 1970s.

Eventually, 2651 came into the hands of the North Jersey Electric Railway Historical Society, which currently owns it and, along with others, cobbled together money over two decades to fund the restoration. The project was finished this year, and some day the car may be hauled by a locomotive on tracks so tourists can ride it.

The hope, McKelvey said, is to move 2651 to Phillipsburg, along the Delaware River in Warren County. Five train lines used to pass through Phillipsburg, which is now home to four nonprofits dedicated to rail history.

McKelvey has been working with Aaron Coleman, a Phillipsburg resident and small-business owner who got involved in restoring the defunct Phillipsburg train station and launched the inaugural Phillipsburg, N.J., Railroad Festival in 2022.

That effort spiraled into a bigger vision to make the town a year-round tourist attraction for rail fans.

The 2651 trolley car would be a centerpiece on a proposed 55-acre railroad campus, allowing visitors to ride the trolley through Walters Park to museums, an event space, amphitheater, festivals or other tourist sights. It could ultimately give a needed boost to Phillipsburg’s downtown and small businesses.

For advocates to realize that dream, Coleman said, several properties that are owned by NJ Transit and the freight railroad company Norfolk Southern must be acquired or accessed. Coleman applied for a grant from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority to fund a professional concept development plan that will cost about $40,000 and take four to six months to complete.

Once they have that plan, they can present it to the railroad companies to advance negotiations.

For Coleman, 2651’s arrival would revive not only the trolley, but also the town, and would bring together a community as trolleys did in the early 20^th century.

“The residents and people need something to be proud of in Phillipsburg,” Coleman said. “I really do believe that the rails are what’s going to help our community.”