Tuesday Trolley Time

*interestingfacts.com

The red trolley on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” traveled 5,000 miles annually

The beloved children’s television program Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood used signals to tell its audience when to get ready to listen and learn. At the start of every episode, host Fred Rogers entered his TV home and sang “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” as he changed from a sport coat and loafers to his signature sweater and sneakers. Next, he typically introduced a topic — sometimes veering into sensitive subject matter like divorce or depression — before beckoning the anthropomorphic Trolley to transport viewers into the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. In a given year of the show, Trolley’s commutes covered 5,000 miles, according to PBS, more than the length of the world’s longest river, the 4,123-mile Nile. 

Trolley’s precise origins are somewhat mysterious, but we do know the one-of-a-kind model was hand-built from wood by a Toronto man named Bill Ferguson in 1967, the year before Mister Rogers’ Neighborhoodpremiered. (Rogers likely met Ferguson when he was living in Toronto and taping Misterogers, which aired on CBC-TV from 1961 until 1964.) The TV host’s love for trolleys went all the way back to his own childhood; during one 1984 episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, he visited the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum and remembered accompanying his dad on long trolley trips. Young viewers often wrote to Rogers with questions about the show’s trolley, such as why there were no people aboard, to which the host responded that the lack of passengers encouraged kids at home to visualize themselves aboard. Today, Trolley is on permanent display at the Fred Rogers Center at Saint Vincent College in Rogers’ hometown of Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Visitors to Latrobe will have no trouble spotting bumper stickers around town that read “My Other Car is a Trolley.”