Sepia Saturday 98: Transportation in Cincinnati

A friend over at Attics and Old Lace has tried to convince me to take part in Sepia Saturday.  Sepia Saturday is a weekly meme which encourages bloggers to publish and share old images and photographs.  When I found out that this weeks topic was related to transportation, I was immediately "in." 

My grandfather, Charles "Fred" Jones, worked his entire life with the Cincinnati Street Railway (aka Cincinnati Transit and Cincinnati Metro).  He was the foreman of a "car barn" and loved streetcars.  He was not very happy when they were replaced with buses. I wrote about his impressive record with the "bus company" both here and here.

Photo Credit:  Rombach and Groene
Availabe for download from Cincinnati Metro site

I love this particular picture because it shows multiple modes of transportation in a time of transition in Cincinnati.  Not only is there a horse-drawn carriage and streetcar, but a bus is pictured in the background as well as the Price Hill incline.  At one time, Cincinnati had five different inclines enabling the growing city population to locate outside of the city basin and move to communities that lined Cincinnati's hilltops.

The same Cincinnati Metro site had a picture of an incline that was known as the Bellevue or Elm Street incline.

Bellevue Incline

Recently my blogger friend from Attics and Old Lace found a beautiful picture postcard that pictures the incline that connected downtown Cincinnati with Mt. Adams.  It has become the background for the Hamilton County (Ohio) Genealogical Society blog.



Mt. Adams Incline

All of these forms of transportation were no longer available at the time of my birth, with the exception of the buses.  The last incline stopped operating in 1948, one year before my birth.  I know my grandfather hated the demise of the streetcar.  I'm told that streetcar maintenance was much easier than the buses with their combustion engines.  I find it interesting that Cincinnatians are once again voting to decide whether or not streetcars should be a part of the Cincinnati landscape.  My grandfather would have loved it.