• daytontrolleys.net
• Local Legacy Title Page / Table of Contents
• The Story
  • Title Page / Table of Contents
  • Background
  • Enter the Electric Streetcar
  • Enter the Electric Trolley Bus
  • Company Overviews
    • Dayton Street Railway
    • Oakwood Street Railway
    • Peoples Railway
    • Dayton-Xenia Railway
    • City Railway
    • City Transit
    • City Railway
    • The Christmas Bus -- A Dayton tradition
  • Transition from Public to Private
  • The Fight to Keep the Trolleys
• The Dayton Trolley Fleet
  • Dayton trolleybuses purchased new
  • Dayton's used trolleybus fleet
  • Dayton's seasonal trolleybuses
• Dayton Trolley Routes
  • Don Brabson's trolley route history
  • City Transit trolley routes circa 1958
  • MVRTA route changes in the 1980s and 1990s

While thousands of US cities operate public mass transportation systems, only five (5) cities still utilize the unique Electric Trolley Bus (ETB) as the core vehicle in their fleets. A mid-sized midwestern city, Dayton, Ohio, is one of the five. The following narrative will attempt to describe this unique mode of public transport, and discuss the tortuous path by which the Dayton system has survived into the Twenty-First Century.

Table of Contents

1. Background

2. Enter the Electric Streetcar

3. Enter the Electric Trolley Bus

4. Company overviews
    Dayton Street Railway Company (DSR)
    Oakwood Street Railway (OSR)
    Peoples Railway Company (PRC)
    Dayton-Xenia Railway Company (D-X)
    City Railway Company (CRC)
    City Transit Company (CTC)
    The Christmas Bus -- A Dayton Tradition

5. Transition from Private to Public Operation

6. The Fight to Keep the ETBs

7. The Fleet
    New ETB Purchases 1933 - 1998
    Used ETB Purchases
    Seasonal Trolleys