A Little piece of Paradise… College Hill, Ohio - SELFCRAFT

Chapter 28 Transportation to College Hill 12In the early 1900’s street cars operated by the Cincinnati Street Railway had a motorman in front ofthe car and a conductor in the rear. The motorman operated the car by turning a lever-handle. In badweather sand from a sand box was sprinkled on tracks to keep the car from skidding. The conductor wason an open back platform to receive fares and issue free transfers. He would come back inside when thecar was moving or the weather inclement.The motormen wore black suits, blue shirts, a money changer and stiff black visor hats.Northbound on Hamilton Avenue from Rockford Avenue, the early tracks were on the west side.Southbound tracks were on the east side of the hill. Sometimes the power would go off in the overheadtrolley wires or trolleys would jump off the wires. If there was low power, the northbound car would haveto wait until the southbound car was down the hill to get enough power. Later the street was repaved andthe tracks were in the middle.The Clifton Ludlow came from downtown through Clifton and Knowlton’s Corner to SpringlawnAvenue, and then it would turn around and go back. They were always far enough behind the College Hillbus that the signal at Springlawn would not alert the College Hill bus to wait for transferring passengers.Especially at night the wait was twenty to thirty minutes minimum or more for the next College Hill bus.The grocery and candy store were highly used in cold weather.College Hill high school students of the 1950’s went to Hughes High by street car, and paid theirown transportation of a quarter a week. If you wanted to go to downtown from Hughes on the CliftonLudlow, you could get a free transfer and come back from town on the College Hill bus.Knowlton’s Corner was a main transfer point and the stores there did a thriving business.Early street cars came north on Hamilton Avenue to North Bend Road, west on North Bend Road tothe car barn on North Bend Road and Hamilton Avenue, where the bus would layover, then continue onNorth Bend Road to Belmont Avenue and south on Belmont Avenue to Hamilton Avenue. Later the carbarn was removed and the layover was at Betty’s Sweet Shop in the morning (on Hamilton Avenue belowLlanfair), and in front of the O.M.I. on Belmont Avenue in the afternoon.Trolley buses replaced street cars. The trolleys had rubber inflated tires and could pull over to thecurb. The old tracks were tarred over. This covering would wear off in spots and become a hazard in badweather. In the days of the street cars the sanding of the tracks was an asset to automobile transportation.The streets were not sanded or plowed by the City in those days. Chains were a must on automobilesduring that time.During W.W. II and thereafter the Ohio Bus Lines were widely used by people of College Hill. Theywere privately owned and operated out of Hamilton, Ohio on a franchise. The buses came down HamiltonAvenue through Mt. Healthy and North College Hill. They were express as far as pickups from HamiltonAvenue and Belmont Avenue south bound to downtown but would let customers off at any corner.Northbound from downtown they could pick up at any corner but not let passengers off until Belmont andHamilton Avenues.Belmont and Hamilton Avenues to downtown took twenty minutes and cost a quarter a trip. (Theyloaded at Fifth and Walnut at the Greyhound Bus Station.). Their drivers were regulars and would lookdown the streets and wait for their usual customers. In later years they were purchased by the CincinnatiStreet Railway and the service was lost.Mr. Chilton Thomson added a bit to the transit history. His brother, Alexander Thomson, Jr., toldhim that when Hamilton Avenue was bad from winter weather, the repair cars of the Cincinnati StreetRailway Company would drag automobiles up Hamilton Avenue hill from the end of the Ludlow Avenue12 By Virginia M. Geyler (1988)174