The Shore Line Trolley Museum

The Shore Line Trolley Museum incorporates as the nonprofit Branford Electric Railway Association on 13 August 1945, founded by Malcom G. Greenaway, Charles F. Munger Jr., and Wadsworth G. Filer, with its first streetcar arriving as a donation from the Five Mile Beach Electric Railway. After the Connecticut Company ends its New Haven streetcar service on 8 March 1947, the association assumes ownership and operation of the roughly 1.25‑mile line on 9 March 1947, acquiring four Connecticut Company cars and three former IRT Third Avenue cars; the company’s remaining streetcar service ceases entirely in 1948. Membership grows from about 150 at launch to roughly 1,000 by 1949, and in 1957 a brick visitor center named Sprague Station is erected at the East Haven end of the line. The museum’s line and facilities become the Branford Electric Railway Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, and after severe flooding from Hurricane Irene in August 2011—damaging nearly 90 streetcars—the affected portion of track returns to service in May 2012. Construction of a 750‑foot trolley‑bus loop begins in 2008, is test‑run with ACF‑Brill trolley bus 205 in April 2009, halted by the 2011 flood, and finally completed in 2017, though regular public operation has not yet started as of 2023.