The Runaway Street Car on Battery Street
When the brakes failed on a steep Seattle incline, passengers faced a terrifying ride as their horse-drawn car hurtled down the tracks toward the waterfront.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Yesterday afternoon as a street car was going down the incline toward Battery street, the brake became useless, and the car ran onto the frightened horses. The driver jumped off with the intention of catching the horses by their bridle. In that he failed, and the car and horses went downhill at a fearful speed. There were three ladies and two gentlemen in the car. One of the gentlemen seized the reins and did his best to keep the horses in the track, but without avail. The ladies were frightened, and made a movement to jump from the car. The other male passenger, taking in the situation at a glance, saw that to leap from the car at the speed it was going would be serious indeed, and he advised the ladies to hold to the car. The horses were running at the top of their speed and then could not keep out of the way of the car. Near the foot of the incline the whiffletree got under the wheels and threw the car from the track and over on its side, throwing the passengers, hats, and broken glass into a heap to one end of the car. Fortunately no one was hurt, and the ladies, after arranging their toilets at the drug store of Hance & Co., walked home. It is a little singular that Yankee ingenuity is not equal to the task of providing some method of checking the speed of a common street car on such steep grades as we have in this city. This is the third street car runaway we have had, and it would seem as though they were enough for a warning.
“It is a little singular that Yankee ingenuity is not equal to the task of providing some method of checking the speed of a common street car on such steep grades as we have in this city.”
This 1886 account of a runaway street car on a steep Seattle incline serves as a sharp reminder of the city's perennial struggle with its difficult, hilly topography and the safety of public transit. More than a century later, as Seattle continues to navigate the complexities of modern light rail and bus transit on steep corridors, the demand for reliable, fail-safe infrastructure remains as urgent as it was in the days of horse-drawn carriages.
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