Hey Old Guys, Help Me Out Identifying This Baltimore Relic (mall, area)

[HandsUpThumbsDown]

Many of them can still be ridden at the streetcar museum.

[Infinite_heights77]

I like this post!!

[rfp]

Originally Posted by Calvert Hall '62

One of these hybrids ran down Eastern Ave. in Highlandtown. Anyone have any info about this hybrid.

The "hybrid" was commonly called in Baltimore and elsewhere a "trackless trolley." The #10 line ran down Eastern Avenue and then turned north on Howard St. to North Ave. and beyond. I occasionally took it home from Poly, but I had to walk across Patterson Park to get to my home in the unit block of Luzerne Ave.

More often I took the #21 trackless trolley which ran up Fairmont Ave to Wolfe St., then turned north to Preston, then west to Charles and beyond. I sometimes took a bus up Charles to Poly, or I walked if I wasn't late. I shot a lot of pool after school in the pool houses that were on Charles just south of North Ave at the time, so the Preston St. trackless trolley was my usual conveyance home, (What a wasted youth!)

Actually, there were two other famous pool houses downtown, one on the second floor above the Gaiety Burlesque Theatre with eye-popping pin-up glossies (eye-popping for a 16-year old boy). The best known pool hall in Baltimore at the time was on the second floor in a place on Lexington, a few blocks west of Charles. One punched a time-clock when one stated and finished, and paid by the time accordingly. It attracted some very professional players.

Getting back to the trollies: The trackless trollies had two double-wide doors on the 'payment' side and were easy to board and get off.

The trollies had series wound DC motors (the other type of DC motor is shunt wound), and is one of two types of motive power that can produce torque at zero rpm (the only other type of motive power that can produce torque at stand-still is the steam engine). Other types of motive power, such as the internal combustion engine, must be brought up to about 300 rpm by a starter motor before the combustion engine can kick-in.

One peculiarity of a series wound motor is that if its mechanical load is removed, the armature increases to spin faster and faster until the motor explodes. I have never read of this happening in Baltimore or anywhere else, but i would have liked to witness it if I were sitting in the front of the trolley and no one else were on board.

I learned all of the above and about all else I needed to know in life by the third year of Poly. Baltimore was a great town to grow up in. Sure beats Peoria.

[Calvert Hall '62]

Originally Posted by rfp

I sometimes took a bus up Charles to Poly, or I walked if I wasn't late. I shot a lot of pool after school in the pool houses that were on Charles just south of North Ave at the time, so the Preston St. trackless trolley was my usual conveyance home, (What a wasted youth!)

Actually, there were two other famous pool houses downtown, one on the second floor above the Gaiety Burlesque Theatre with eye-popping pin-up glossies (eye-popping for a 16-year old boy). The best known pool hall in Baltimore at the time was on the second floor in a place on Lexington, a few blocks west of Charles. One punched a time-clock when one stated and finished, and paid by the time accordingly. It attracted some very professional players.

And the future engineers spent considerable time on the wide sidewalk in front of Poly on North Ave. peering into their surveying instruments or maybe they were cameras to shoot females of the species strutting by.

Pool halls are something I missed out on as a young thug. Don't recall any that you mentioned. Maybe cuz they were hidden away on 2nd floors or else they closed down by the time I developed a fascination to roam around downtown at age 14 in 1958.

[rfp]

I was not a thug. I was a Poly A-course student who happened to be one heck-of-a-good pool player.

[rudy_d]

Hybrid/trolley buses like this are still quite prevalent in Seattle and Vancouver, Canada.

[Calvert Hall '62]

Originally Posted by rfp

I was not a thug. I was a Poly A-course student who happened to be one heck-of-a-good pool player.

No offense intended; was referring to myself, age 14, ducktail hairdo, pack of smokes rolled-up in T-shirt sleeve .... maybe thug wanna be was more like it.

[P47P47]

Originally Posted by Calvert Hall '62

No offense intended; was referring to myself, age 14, ducktail hairdo, pack of smokes rolled-up in T-shirt sleeve .... maybe thug wanna be was more like it.

Or perhaps "drape"?

[Calvert Hall '62]

Originally Posted by P47P47

Or perhaps "drape"?

Haven't heard that term in the context that you apparently intended since the 50s. Only place it's defined in that way -- that I could find -- is in the Urban Dictionary:

Urban Dictionary: drape
DrapeA rebel. Opposite of a square. Taken from John Water's classic film Crybaby

"My daughter is a good little girl she would never be seen with one of those drapes!"
________

Entry doesn't explain the origin of the term in that context. Certainly didn't originate in the Waters' flick.

[P47P47]

I remember hearing "drape" in the early '60's, usually combined with "juvenile delinquent" as "juvenile delinquent drape".

While the Urban Dictionary seems to credit "Crybaby" with the coining of the term, lifetime Baltimoreans know that it was used here from early '50's through early/mid '60's.