The Fort Collins Municipal Railway’s car depot is situated on Oak Street, near City Park in northwestern Fort Collins. Once a regularly functioning city trolley in its own right, the Municipal Railway is now a seasonal “heritage streetcar,” a living exhibition of Fort Collins’s streetcar history. Birney Safety Car No. 21, one of the original cars manufactured for the Railway by the American Car Company, features prominently.
\nFort Collins first acquired its own streetcar network in 1907, when the Denver & Interurban Company (D&I) built three lines of track that together carried three cars through the city’s burgeoning downtown. The D&I system did not last long, however; with the conclusion of World War I and the post-war boom in automobile sales, D&I was unable to compete. The company went bankrupt in 1918, and the Fort Collins streetcar abruptly ceased operation in July of that year.
\nMany citizens of Fort Collins came to rely on the streetcar as a means of transportation, and so voted for the city to acquire D&I’s defunct assets in January of 1919. Because the older cars used by D&I were too expensive to upgrade, the city purchased four affordable and efficient Birney cars from the American Car Company. The city acquired five more between 1920 and 1946. The Birney cars provided service on the Municipal Railway every ten to twenty minutes, with a fare of one nickel that was kept artificially low for the Railway’s operating duration.
\nThe Municipal Railway was highly effective. Providing service from residential areas to the city center, as well as to nearby schools and amusement venues, the residents of Fort Collins loved the system. However, the rising popularity of automobiles on city streets proved inexorable, and service was discontinued in June of 1951. With the end of streetcar service, the Municipal Railway decommissioned and sold its Birney cars, all except No. 21, which the city put on display in front of Library Park.
\nThere it sat until 1976, when the Fort Collins Junior Women’s Club began its effort to refurbish the old streetcar as part of a downtown beautification project. During the years-long process, volunteers decided that they wanted to restore No. 21 to operational capacity, which entailed restoring the tracks it had once called home and building a new repository to house it. The city and the beautification volunteers organized the Fort Collins Municipal Railway Society in 1980 to spearhead the new project. In 1984, No. 21 began operating again along Mountain Avenue, and the federal government added it to the National Register of Historic Places. Since then, the Municipal Railway has run No. 21 to and from City Park on spring and summer weekends; a refurbished Birney Car No. 25 joined it in 2020.
","sponsor":null,"accessinfo":"","lede":"Originally operating from 1919 to 1951, the Fort Collins Municipal Railway reopened in 1984 as a seasonal “heritage” line, carrying passengers along a former service route in one of the original “Birney” cars.","website":"","related_resources":["City of Fort Collins. “National Register of Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form—Fort Collins Municipal Railway Birney Safety Streetcar #21,” December 9, 1983. https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/84000860_text.
","Fleming, Barbara. From the Fort Collins Coloradoan website. May 12, 2019. “History: How Fort Collins got its trolley, which lives on today,” available at https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/local/fort-collins/2019/05/12/history-how-fort-collins-got-its-trolley-which-lives-today/3654172002/
","From the Fort Collins Coloradoan website. July 4, 2020. “After nearly 70 years, Fort Collins sees second restored streetcar on the tracks,” available at https://www.coloradoan.com/picture-gallery/news/2020/07/04/restored-fort-collins-trolley-returns-tracks-historic-two-car-trip/5377639002/
","From the Fort Collins History Connection website. “Fort Collins Trolley,” available at https://history.fcgov.com/explore/trolley
","From the Fort Collins Trolley website. “History,” available at https://www.fortcollinstrolley.org/history
","From the History Colorado website. April 24, 2019. “A Ride Back in Time: Fort Collins’ Historic Trolley Turns 100,” available at https://www.historycolorado.org/story/going-places/2019/04/24/ride-back-time-fort-collins-historic-trolley-turns-100
","From the History Colorado website. “Fort Collins Municipal Railway Birney Safety Streetcar No. 21,” available at https://www.historycolorado.org/location/fort-collins-municipal-railway-birney-safety-streetcar-no-21
"],"factoids":[],"files":{"https://www.intermountainhistories.org/files/fullsize/7b4c77fff926596e4029bb732cd8959a.jpg":{"id":3621,"mime-type":"image/png","title":"Fort Collins - aerial view. 1929.","description":"An aerial view of Fort Collins in 1929. In the upper half, streetcar lines criss-cross downtown, carrying passengers on Birney cars. |Fort Collins - aerial view. 1929. Colorado State University Library, https://archives.mountainscholar.org/digital/collection/p17393coll50/id/9423/rec/12
","thumbnail":"https://www.intermountainhistories.org/files/square_thumbnails/7b4c77fff926596e4029bb732cd8959a.jpg"},"https://www.intermountainhistories.org/files/fullsize/4e851d1f2bf83e4c7df5c9871e2a3954.jpg":{"id":3622,"mime-type":"image/png","title":"A residential street in Fort Collins in 1924","description":"A residential street in Fort Collins in 1924. Birney Car #23, purchased by the Municipal Railway five years earlier, heads west. |Street scene. 1924. Colorado State University Library, https://archives.mountainscholar.org/digital/collection/p17393coll50/id/14789/rec/3
","thumbnail":"https://www.intermountainhistories.org/files/square_thumbnails/4e851d1f2bf83e4c7df5c9871e2a3954.jpg"},"https://www.intermountainhistories.org/files/fullsize/2415055cb7c606e8d274ae5fca4ee772.jpg":{"id":3623,"mime-type":"image/png","title":"A map of the Municipal Railway lines in 1951","description":"A map of the Municipal Railway lines in 1951, when the city decommissioned the trolleys, superimposed over a modern map of Fort Collins. |User:Rocks with Salt. “Fort Collins Municipal Railway Time Lapse.” Map. Wikimedia Commons, 2022. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ft_Collins_Municipal_Railway_timelapse.gif. Data retrieved from Colorado Department of Transportation. https://www.codot.gov/programs/research/pdfs/2020-research-reports/historic-streetcar-systems-of-colorado-1/cdot-2020-11.pdf
","thumbnail":"https://www.intermountainhistories.org/files/square_thumbnails/2415055cb7c606e8d274ae5fca4ee772.jpg"},"https://www.intermountainhistories.org/files/fullsize/39d4819c825209f67dfe4b9b994f9200.jpg":{"id":3624,"mime-type":"image/png","title":"Restored Birney Car #21 on the Fort Collins heritage trolley line in 1987","description":"Restored Birney Car #21 on the Fort Collins heritage trolley line in 1987. Purchased by the Municipal Railway from the American Car Company in 1919, Car #21 is one of three Birney cars listed on the National Register of Historic Places. |Morgan, Steve. 1987. Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FortCollinsBirney_streetcar_MountainAve,_cropped.jpg.
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