This open-sided car represents the earliest of trolley-car designs, not much different than the horse- or mule-drawn cars which were their predecessors. The original body would have been built in local shops, probably by the Los Angeles Railway Company, and placed on wheel assemblies (called trucks) forged by car building companies in the East. Most of the trolley cars that survived in-service into the 20th century were built on a pair of 4-wheeled trucks, rather than on only one; the former could carry more passengers with greater stability.
Two cars came to Travel Town by means of an equipment trade in 1962, and were known as Los Angeles Railway #51 and #57. A few years later, both trolley cars and the San Francisco Cable Car were picked up by Universal Studios, refurbished to a movie-studio idea of turn-of-the-century trolleys, and used in the movie “Gaily, Gaily.” Much later, when the steam locomotive operation at Travel Town was suspended because of needed repairs to the boiler, Travel Town used both trolleys, fitted with gasoline engines, on a loop track around the perimeter. This operation ran from 1970 to 1975, when again cost of repairs permanently sidelined the trolley ride. It was replaced by the scale train ride visitors enjoy today.
In 1999 a transportation careers program developed and funded by the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority proposed a restoration project for the trolleys. In cooperation with Los Angeles Unified School District, the project incorporated skill-building for high school students in drafting and basic wood-working through disassembly, component reproduction, and re-assembly of both cars. Both trolleys were substantially non-historic because of the movie-studio rebuilding in the 1960s. In the end, components between the two trolleys were combined to rebuild a single open-sided trolley representation which was presented back to the Museum for display in 2005.