Dayton Trolleys

As advertised, the rollout/change of two trolley lines occurred on Sun Aug 31. You can read about it here.

There were glitches, namely the sign codes for the buses were not updated on Day 1. Everything looked OK on Ridetime and Transsee and Transit, but the buses were signed with old or expired destinations.

Things were sort of fixed the next day, but are still broken from my viewpoint. At a future juncture, I'll "Old Man Simpson" a rant about signage.

SUMMARY:Five routes in Dayton are currently (Sep 10 2025) running as trolley bus:

Route 1 From Westown Hub to Eastown Hub via Third St
Route 3 From Stanview and Brandt (new north layover point) to Eastown Hub via Troy and Wayne
Route 4 From Westown Hub to Eastown Hub via Hoover and Xenia
Route 7 From Eastown Hub to Meijer Englewood via Watervliet and North Main
Route 8 From Northwest Hub to Westown Hub via Salem and Lakeview

Route 1 has approximately 4 1/2 miles of off-wire operation
Route 3 has about a half mile of off-wire operation
Route 7 currently has about 4 miles one way on the south end off-wire and about 3 miles on the north end
Route 8 currently has about 2 miles one way on the north end off-wire

Route 7 overhead is being rebuilt from Watervliet and Arbor to Watervliet and Patterson, approximately 1.6 miles. Upon completion the route will still have about 2.4 miles off wire on the south end.

Route 8 is dewired due to street construction. Whenever the city of Dayton finishes Salem Ave, the wire will go back up and it'll be full trolley again

So it's very good news on the trolley front in Dayton. For those who might visit, Wright Stop Plaza downtown has now lots of trolley bus action, and with now 4 routes terminating there (1, 3, 4, and 7), so does Eastown Hub.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE

Mark your calendars -- the RTA is planning to run the Christmas Trolley (Marmon 559) in "Santa Claus" Service between Thanksgiving and Christmas. No details have been provided more than a simple, we think we're going to do it; I'll provide more details as they become available. Were I interested in potentially coming to Dayton to ride or photograph, last year it seemed like the weekends had the best ridership.

As always, RTA Ridetime is an awesome online resource to find where trolleys are at any given time on the system. An alternative to Ridetime is Transsee. If you are Facebook capable, there is also an active Facebook private group at Dayton Trolleys Fans

Dayton Ohio's public transit history started in 1869, when construction of the horsecar line on Third St, the Dayton Street Rail Road, was begun. This horsecar line began operations in 1870, running from King St (today JH McGee Blvd) to Linden, with an extension to Findlay St opened later in 1870. Four more horsecar lines subsequently opened (Dayton View, Oakwood Street, Wayne and Fifth, and Fifth St) and extensions were added to serve the city before the first electric operation in Dayton in 1888.

The first electric operation was the White Line, which ran from N Main and Forest to Home Ave and King, which was an interchange with horsecars and the Home Ave RR (a steam railroad to the National Military Home -- today the VA Home). Last Dayton horsecar extension was in 1890. The last horsecar line ran up the Wayne Ave hill to the Asylum in 1899, and to the relief of the riders was converted to electricity. At this point, electric streetcars served Dayton's transit needs.

Electric operations grew from the White Line in 1888, with the Red Line (King and Fifth to the VA Home in 1890), Third (1894), Fifth (1894), Oakwood and Dayton View (1895), Wayne and Fifth (then People's Railway -- 1896) and the Dayton Street Railway (1909).

From 1909 to 1933, counting the city streetcar services of two of the nine interurbans which served Dayton, there were six independent streetcar companies in Dayton. After a disastrous carbarn fire on the Dayton Street Railway in August 1932, that line, extending from Linden and Santa Cruz to Salem and Catalpa, was converted to trolleybuses in April 1933, the first such operation in Ohio. Over the next 14 years, the remaining streetcar operations were converted to trolley and gasoline buses. Last streetcar operation in Dayton was on the far west end of Third St in November 1947.

Meanwhile, by 1956, those six streetcar companies turned into a single bus company, City Transit, whose operations were in turn purchased in 1972 by the Miami Valley RTA, renamed the Greater Dayton RTA in 2003. Electric operations in Dayton have grown to follow population movement, diesel bus operations were inaugurated, trolley operations were contracted, diesel operations expanded, and in the late 1990s, a renaissance and expansion of the trolleybus system. Dayton has seen four generations of trolleybuses since 1947, with the most recent fifth generation, the dual-mode "NexGen" trolleys, capable of on-wire and extended off wire operation. These new trolleys, whose demonstrators were built by Vossloh-Kiepe, arrived in 2014, and the production fleet, built by Kiepe, was put into service in 2020.

The utilization of trolleybuses make Dayton a part of a unique set of transit operators in North America; there are only five trolleybus cities in the US (Dayton, San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia and Boston) and one in Canada (Vancouver), although trolleybuses are operated extensively in Europe and China. The uniqueness of this mode of transit is the focus of this website. This website is not affiliated in any way shape or form with the Greater Dayton RTA.

Info and material to share is always welcome.

www.trolleybuses.net Dayton page Older Dayton trolleybus photos	Cory's Dayton page	www.newdavesrailpix.com Dayton page Dayton streetcars and interurban photos	Off-site Links to Dayton Transit info
Pictures (mostly recent) Vosslohs, ETIs, BBCs, a few Flyers and a few diesels	Historical items: Interurbans, streetcars, maps, signs, rosters, dates, reports, studies	Dayton Railway Historical Society	Harvey Hylton's Historical Docs Trolleybuses: A Dayton Local Legacy Dayton Public Transit: 1870-Present The Washington St Calamity
Greater Dayton RTA website GDRTA Facebook page
*Why does it appear you have four websites containing nearly the same information?* Answer: I control three of the sites, and provide webspace to host the fourth. Material is nominally segregated: - www.daytontrolleys.net contains photos of Dayton I own, or material I've created. Mostly recent photos, with some historical material covering history back to 1869. If it's a historical writeup, illustrated with pictures, it's likely here. - www.trolleybuses.net contains trolleybus photos from cities all over North America taken by or owned by others. Primarily older photos and ads. If somebody besides me took the photo in Dayton, it's likely here. - www.newdavesrailpix.com is a site originally built by Dave, which contains photos of electric rail transit from all across the country, including Dayton. With Dave's passing, I host that material. If I don't possess the physical Dayton streetcar/interurban photo, it's likely here. - Cory's page is my friend Cory's page on Dayton buses which I host in my webspace. That site contains his photos.