Trolleys once traveled Hartz Avenue, moving people and freight.

The tracks in Danville's downtown also marked the town's transition from a small farming community to bustling suburb and leisure destination for well-to-do Bay Area citizens.

It was called The Alligator, The Dinky, The Riveter and The Toonerville Trolley. This old baggage car was turned into a hybrid trolley car that ran through the heart of Danville from 1914 to 1924, according to Robert Daras Tatam's account in  "Old Times in Contra Costa."

The electric trolley line connected Danville and Alamo to other public transit systems in the Bay Area that also carried people and freight.

The line was known as the San Francisco-Sacramento Railroad. It extended 10.15 miles from the junction with the Oakland, Antioch and Eastern railway line in the town of Saranap (now part of Walnut Creek), and into Diablo.

The line carried workers from Danville to the booming shipyards at Port Chicago during World War I, said Beverly Lane, curator of the Museum of the San Ramon Valley.

Travelers also connected from the trolley to lines running to Oakland, where they could catch a ferry to San Francisco, Sacramento or Chico, Lane says.

Robert Burgess, who founded the Diablo Country Club in 1912, persuaded the railway to extend the line to his new community at the base of Mount Diablo—a key factor in the club's growth and appeal.

Each weekend, particularly in the summer, trains ran from Danville to Diablo, carrying families from San Francisco, Oakland and elsewhere who had vacation homes at the club. These trains were called "Million Dollar Specials" by residents, Lane says.

Train car 1051, was nicknamed 'The Toonerville Trolley' after a popular comic strip of the day, Toonerville Folks, also known as The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All Trains, by artist Fontaine Fox.

The strip ran from 1908 to 1955 and followed the lives of those traveling back and forth between a small town and the big city. The "rickety trolley" that carried them also was a central character in the strip.

According to Tatam, the trolley was far from comfortable. It was loud and broke down a lot.

"Passengers had to open their umbrellas inside the car when it rained," he wrote.  However, "people delighted in the eccentricities of their electric trolley car."

In March 1924, the trolley line gave way to the growing popularity of buses and cars, and rattled off into Danville's history.

For more information, visit the Museum of the San Ramon Valley. Old Times in Contra Costa County by Robert Daras Tatam was published by Highland Publishers, Pittsburg 1993. 

Check back next Tuesday for more local trivia and history. Want to share a memory or story from our community's past? E-mail Kirsten.E.Branch@gmail.com.