Toonerville
Collector's Club
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The Toonerville Trolley, which made its last trip to the car barn in 1955 after some 40 years of service, was probably the most famous trolley in the world. It was familiar to millions of Americans through its long appearance on the comic pages of hundreds of daily and Sunday newspapers, and had become synonymous with rickety, broken-down transportation the world around.
A product of the mind of cartoonist Fontaine Fox, the “Eugene Field of comic artists,” the seed of the idea for the Trolley existed as early as 1904 in Louisville, Kentucky. Fox, a young reporter on the Louisville Herald, was aiding his editor with drawings in an editorial campaign to improve the service on the Brook Street Trolley Line in that city. His satirical drawings were executed with considerable feeling since young Fontaine Fox himself was forced to ride the ramshackle Brook Street trolleys to work.
The actual creation of the Trolley came a few years later as a direct result of a ride Mr. Fox took on a trolley in Pelham, New York, which was strongly reminiscent of the Brooks Street cars. On that day, Fox, journeying to visit another cartoonist, Charles Voight, boarded an ancient trolley that took him beyond the city’s limits. “The car had all the motions of a small shrimp boat,” he recalled. Not knowing the exact location of his friend’s house, Fox asked directions of the motorman. The motorman, who was somewhat the inspiration for the Toonerville Skipper, was acquainted with all the inhabitants along his route. He stopped the trolley at the proper place, led Fox to the top of a nearby hill, and pointed out Voight’s house while the other passengers patiently waited. Considerably impressed by the appearance and affability of the old fellow and the quaintness of the trolley, cartoonist Fox set to work immediately upon his return home and drew his first sketch of the Toonerville Trolley. This was in 1916.
During its long period of service, the Trolley was as well known on the American scene as the Statue of Liberty and Brooklyn Bridge. This was due in part, perhaps, to the fact that trolleys were then a popular and important means of urban and suburban transportation for Americans, and through the daily adventures of the Toonerville Trolley, regular street car riders were able to laugh at themselves and at the injustices of their own local systems.
HOW THE TROLLEY GOT ON TRACK
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