unexpected....

[madman]

great story joe sounds like some of my adventures.

 

[tftfan]

I know that line Joe..... gonna grab some ice cream hun....... be back real.....sooon. ! lol She knows what that means now.

 

[Brains]

lost of times trolley lines ran right alongside roadways- it was cheaper to buy land next to roads or something about the right of way already being sort of graded maybe. It's a bit tough to locate one- they've all been abandoned since around the 30's-40's, and being next to roads after they were abandoned they dont leave much of a right of way to hunt along and if the road gets widened the line ends up under the road (my favorite example, the columbus delaware and marion being under 23 north of columbus, or how all of us40 from springfield to columbus out almost to newark (somewhere around there...) sits on a trolley line. Somewhere between columbus and springfield you'll notice where new 40 and old 40 diverge (for old 40 to go through a little town) old 40 has an original substation left over from the trolley line along it. Last i saw, some dude was planting some flowers around it 'cause i guess he lives there now.

You need to look for somewhere where the road and the trolley line would have split, maybe through a hilly area or somewhere where the trolley line crossed it's own land to follow some other right of way, or maybe where it might have followed a railroad at one time. Sometimes, where a line followed a smaller road that's remained undeveloped since the line was there, or perhaps the right-of way remains the same but now instead of a railroad it's a road you can find stuff off the sides of the road. A guy in western ohio has had lots of success along one such line. Line was abandoned, so they turned it into a road- guy saw insulators out of his car's window one day.

I use google earth and an ohio online public utilities map...but i don't think pennsylvania has a similar map service.

another thing you can look for to identify where an old line might have ran is to find some waterway where they would have needed to build a bridge and look for evidence of old abutments from the line. Sometimes the old abutments were incorporated into modern bridges. I believe, should you find yourself on a bike path along a river in lancaster ohio, if you go under a certain bridge and look at it's southern abutment you'll notice the structure on your side (north) is made of modern looking concrete, but the south side appears to be old lime (or was it sand stone? or was it even real in the first place?) stone blocks with some modern concrete thrown around it. I think it's part of an old line they reused- not the only time i've seen this i don't think.
Trolley line's where it's at... but you probably won't find anything along them. It's all either buried, in a guys (or maybe even a girls?) basement somewhere, on ebay, smashed into 1,000 pieces (or around 100 as i theorized with an incredibly rare new-lexington made ohio brass insulator i once found around 20 quarter or nickel sized pieces of), at an auction, or still being used somewhere as they liked to reuse stuff back in the 20's-40's