An interior and an exterior view of the Paul Valley trolley power plant and car barn on Easton Road in Warrington Township.  The power plant building still stands today, albeit repurposed.

Bucks County Trolley Lines 

by Mike Szilagyi, AICP, author and historian
Wednesday, September 9, 2025, 6:00 – 7:30 pm

Bucks County, Pennsylvania, was once served by 120 miles of trolley lines. During the decades spanning the 1890s to 1950s, a variety of trolley cars glided through towns and across Bucks County’s countryside, beginning with Langhorne’s quaint open streetcars and culminating with streamlined interurbans streaking across open fields from Sellersville to Quakertown at 80 miles per hour. The trolleys were powered by electricity, with the line stretching north from Doylestown energized by renewable hydroelectric power generated by the Delaware Canal. Before automobiles and trucks were commonplace, and before roads were paved, the rapid, convenient electric trolley was the best mode of travel for both passengers and freight. These rare photographs provide glimpses of that long-lost mode of travel, and charming scenes of Bucks County’s soon-to-be-altered landscapes.

Oliver Evans Chapter Member Mike Szilagyi, AICP, plans and designs pedestrian and bicycle facilities at Michael Baker International. His decades devoted to planning Pennsylvania’s bicycle trail network yields the added benefit of a deep knowledge of the long-forgotten web of former railroad and canal rights-of-way built before the automobile came to dominate the landscape. In many cases, abandoned railroad and trolley track-beds may be repurposed as rails-to-trails, and so returned to their roles as avenues of clean congestion-free transportation. A lifelong cyclist, author of Bucks County Trolleys (2020) and co-author of Montgomery County Trolleys (2018).

Location: Parkway Central Free Library, 1901 Vine Street, 4th Floor Skylight Room.

The room will be open at 5:30 for members and visitors to mingle.

The accessibility entrance is located at the back of the library on 20th and Wood Street.
There is metered parking around the library building and a paid parking lot behind the library with an entrance off Callowhill Street.
The Free Library has Bicycle Racks at the main entrance on Vine Street, and is directly served by the following SEPTA routes:  32, 33 and 49 and within 2-3 blocks by SEPTA routes 7 and 48.