NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Nashville used to have miles of streetcar rails that served residents for decades, and at one point, Sylvan Park had its own dedicated streetcar called the dinky.
News 2 sat down with historian Ralcon Wagner, author of “Nashville’s Streetcars and Interurban Railways (Images of Rail),” to learn more about the city’s extensive network — which included the Sylvan Park dinky.
Sylvan Park’s streetcar wasn’t the only one dubbed a dinky; Wagner explained the word was used by Nashville newspapers at the time to describe streetcar lines with only one “truck,” which is a wheelset of four wheels. Regular streetcars had two trucks, but the dinkies were smaller as they were on lower-density routes.
Music City’s streetcars were rolled out around the 1860s because of Nashville’s continued growth, Wagner said, and the earliest ones were pulled by either mules or horses. Animal-powered streetcars could only go so far, though, and Wagner said that the streetcars were electrified in time for Tennessee’s 1897 Centennial Exposition…