Like hundreds of cities in America in the first half of the 20th century, Altoona had a mass-transit option that today is romanticized – and practical – only in a handful of large cities, such as New Orleans. But the Altoona and Logan Valley Electric Railway was essential to the area’s transportation at the time, and its history has been captured digitally for the public to enjoy.

“This is the only DVD of color footage of the Altoona trolley system,” said Jeff Holland of the Horseshoe Curve Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society. “We have a vested interest in maintaining the history … to preserve railroad and railway history, and the trolley is part of that.”

Copies of the $20 DVD are available for purchase at several locations in town: Holland’s Ellis Office Supply in Greenwood, the gift shops of the Railroaders Memorial Museum in Altoona and the Horseshoe Curve National Historic Site west of town, the Blair County Historical Society at Baker Mansion and the Blair County Genealogical Library in Hollidaysburg. Email AltoonaTrolley DVD@gmail.com for information on how to have one mailed or delivered.

Or, for the cost of admission to Baker Mansion, 3419 Oak Lane, Altoona – $8 – you can view the 23-minute video as part of an exhibit on the trolley system when the historical museum opens for the season on May 21, said Holland, who also is on the board of trustees for the historical society.

Joe DeFrancesco, executive director of the historical society at Baker Mansion, said the transportation room in the basement was renovated into a new social and eating area with temporary exhibits. And the history of the Altoona trolley system will be the first feature in that space, including a viewing station for the trolley DVD, he said.

“It was not originally a planned space, but it fell together correctly, and turned out really nice,” DeFrancesco said.

Most of the DVD footage is silent, reflecting the lack of universal recording equipment of the day.

But some sounds of the Altoona trolley system running were recorded and married to the video, Holland said.

Segments were taken from 8mm and 16mm film in color and black and white from news sources and rail fans, including the late Howard Wright, formerly a cinematographer for WTAJ, who was well-known for a time for his productions covering various rail-oriented venues, Holland said.

Wright donated all of his films to the Horseshoe Curve chapter, which produced a shorter, VHS version in the 1980s. But more materials were found and better technology allowed the group to produce a higher-quality DVD, especially with the threat of disintegration of the old film over time, Holland said.

Portions capture a streetcar traveling at least 40 miles an hour, he said. For a time, it ran from the bottom of the Diamond in Hollidaysburg, across the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks into Gaysport, back up Penn Street and out to Logan Boulevard and into Altoona. It would loop through downtown, head out through Juniata and take a back way to Bellwood, then Tipton, Grazierville, Tyrone and east to Nealmont.

“It paralleled the Pennsylvania Railroad and, in some cases, shared its road bed,” Holland said.

It started out horsedrawn, and went electric on July 4, 1891. It ran year-round even though some compartments, especially where the operators stood, were open-air, he said. By the 1920s, they were enclosed.

Most travelers were shoppers or workers, but for a time, the trolley had a large, roll-up door that enabled it to serve as a hearse, Holland said.

“It would run up to Rose Hill Cemetery with a coffin and they would have to carry it” out to a gravesite, he said. That service ended in the 1930s.

All trolley service ended on Aug. 7, 1954, and footage of that is on the DVD, Holland said.

“Howard Wright was on a street car that day, and he filmed it,” he said.

The trolley system ended about the same time as the steam era was ending on the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the resulting decline in employment in the local railroad shops, according to Holland. He noted that AMTRAN carries on the tradition of the old trolley system and, later, the Logan Valley Bus Co., and today has the distinction of being the first municipal transportation authority in Pennsylvania that operates today. AMTRAN’s bus maintenance facility is in the same structure once known as the “car barn” for the trolley system, Holland said.

He said a supplement to the DVD is the book “Altoona & Logan Valley Electric Railway,” available locally at Barnes & Noble and the Railroaders Memorial Museum, as well as online at www.ArcadiaPublishing.com.

Sales of the book and DVD benefit the Horseshoe Curve chapter and its efforts to preserve history, Holland said.

In addition to the trolley exhibition, DeFrancesco said the Baker Mansion will be home to a number of new exhibits this year, as well as a museum store in the new visitors center that will open sometime this spring.

Baker Mansion will be opened on weekends only from noon to 4 p.m. until June 4, when hours extend to noon four Tuesdays through Sundays through Labor Day.

Mirror Life Writer Cherie Hicks is at 949-7030.