A closer look
It’s easy to imagine cities buzzing with buses and Ubers, but a century ago, the kings of the streetcar lines had four legs. Horse-drawn trams were carriages on steel rails, gliding smoother than cobblestones ever allowed. Horses pulled entire wagons of passengers, clattering in time with hooves. For a while, it looked like the future of public transport. But horses tired, streets piled with… well, horse leftovers, and electric trams soon raced ahead. Still, the horse-drawn tram left a mark: it bridged the romance of carriages with the efficiency of modern rails and proved that progress often trotted before it sprinted.
