Return to glory: After 11 years of dreams, plans, setbacks, successes, grant awards, fundraising, track rehab and car refurbishment, the Issaquah Valley Trolley has achieved its long-desired goal of bringing trolley service to Issaquah. Car No. 519 was returned from the Gomaco Trolley Company on Thursday, August 23rd, and immediately began testing on the mainline. This photo depicts Gomaco representative John Tarr at the control stand as No. 519 heads south past the car barn switch on the morning of the 25th with the first of a series of runs to obtain performance data.
Issaquah's trolley story begins in 2001 when a demonstration program was operated on weekends from spring through fall using a car borrowed from the Yakima Valley Trolleys. The project was considered so successful that long-term plans were made to develop a permanent trolley program, and a search began for equipment to operate in Issaquah.
Sister cars No. 519 and 521 were built in 1925 for use on the narrow-gauge trolley system in Lisbon, Portugal. The two cars were acquired in the 1970s by the city of Aspen, Colorado for a proposed streetcar project that eventually floundered. Issaquah obtained the cars in 2003 and began seeking funds to refurbish a car and rehabilitate the track, which was finally obtained in 2010. After some false starts with the trolley, in March of 2012 No. 519 was shipped to the Gomaco plant in Ida Grove, Iowa, for conversion to standard gauge and addition of a second control stand so the car could be operated bidirectionally. (Since Issaquah does not have an overhead trolley wire system, a power cart is semi-permanently attached to supply electricity for the trolley's traction motors.)
Testing and operator training will proceed for the next month and a half, with plans to begin full operation following the city's annual Salmon Days Festival in October. If you're in the area, come on by and check out both the trolley and the collection of historical equipment at the Issaquah Depot Museum. (Incidentally, it's rather ironic that I moved away from Issaquah, where I had lived for six years, only a few months before the trolley program came to fruition. I guess I'll just have to move back down that way...)
