Picture 13-5.

This is the headlight car, around 1910.  Its job was to carry nighttime headlights to cars active on the system.  A few headlights can be seen on the far platform of the car.  In the early days of electric streetcars, headlights were not permanently mounted on the cars.  When they were needed, they were mounted on a bracket on the dash, and plugged into a socket next to the mount.  By loading a pile of headlights on the extra-large platforms of this car and driving it around the system at dusk, they could avoid requiring passenger cars to detour to the car barn to obtain headlights.  The little car appears to have been built from an old horsecar body.  Its five windows make it even shorter than the original order of electric cars, which had six.  The car has a trolley pole, but the motorman's controls are not mounted on the platforms of the car; they must be mounted inside the car body, a very unusual arrangement.  (The windows are not broken; what looks like it might be broken glass comes from reflections.)

Danv-headlight_car-1910-12.jpg

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