Having covered earlier forms of getting around, namely horse-drawn contrivances, in his Coins magazine column, transportation token authority John M. Coffee, Jr. turned his attention to a more modern mode of transit, the trolley car. Below the title, “Numismatics of the Trolley Car” in the March 1965 issue, he wrote:
“All too few of us appreciate the decisive impact upon the growth of this country that was made by the trolley car. It made it possible for our towns to become cities, and for our cities to become metropolises.
“Remember this: it was the electric streetcar that made ‘rapid transit’ possible for the first time. Its predecessor, the horsecar, moved along scarcely faster than a man could walk. One didn’t take the horsecar to save time; one took it to save walking. And the by-products of its motive power lent a dubious fragrance to the streets.
“The electric streetcar, moving along at 20, 30, and even more miles per hour, made it possible to build homes farther and farther away
