Car Barns and Shops
LVT needed to maintain interurban cars, streetcars, freight trolleys, and line maintenance equipment such as the overhead wire car and the snow sweepers. LVT's primary car storage yard and major shop was the Fairview barn southwest of downtown Allentown. Tracks to Fairview left the main line just south of the 8th Street bridge on St. John Street, ran to Lumber Street, turned south on Lumber to Cumberland, then into the shop yard. To reach downtown from Fairview, LVT had the awkward situation of running interurban cars, sometimes backward, through residential areas along Lumber and St. John streets.
A second maintenance facility and yard was in Souderton, at 2nd and Central Streets. This is now the location of the Souderton fire department building. The Souderton maintenance facility was reached by a track branching from the main line on Summit Street at running two blocks east. The reliable classic all wood arch windowed 801 was kept at Souderton as backup and was used frequently.
Along with rolling stock, LVT had to maintain AC to DC power conversion substations along its route to generate its 600 VDC trolley voltage from locally provided AC power. In 1951 it had an aging car fleet and had to pay all costs to maintain roadbed and track, drainage systems, stations, other buildings, catenary, bridges, and snow removal. And local property taxes. Revenues were not keeping up with expenses and the line faced shutdown.
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—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
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“I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust,... confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of,—sitting there now at three o’clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o’clock in the morning.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)