All aboard for streetcar rides and memories

"Memories," 5 x 7 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press paper

It's ironic that downtown Oklahoma City is all abuzz with the coming of new streetcars, and the end to months of torn up streets, as with many cities today.
Those thoughts helped spur today's #watercolor, in response to #worldwatercolormonth daily challenge prompt No. 29: "Childhood Memories."
I can remember being excited to travel to Dallas from Fort Worth to see Aunt Sissie and ride the Dallas streetcars. The fascination of watching the intersecting wires, and the fun waiting to pull the cord and ring a bell to signal a stop came to mind as I considered  this painting. And the "ding-ding-ding of the bells that served as horns for people and cars. It helps that at the end of the ride, we'd manage to find an ice cream shop where I could get lime sherbet.

I had to look up photos of street cars, and I couldn't find a color scheme, though this is from an actual Dallas street car. Service stopped in about 1956.
Since then I've ridden older street cars in New Orleans and cable cars in San Francisco; and new ones in Seattle and Portland.  Yes, I'll ride the new ones here too, just for the fun of it.
But the local lines pale in comparison to what was "The Interurban" about 100 years ago which stretched from Norman to Edmond.  The streetcar played a significant role in the expansion of this city and elsewhere. 
The automobile killed street car service here and elsewhere after WWII, and today the insanity of traffic jams and commuting shows how short-sighted that was. Consider the race track of Broadway Extension. How so advanced it would be if we had rail going down the median, saving gas, time, the environment and more. 
Not going to happen in a state addicted economically, politically and culturally to petroleum.
But at least we'll have  downtown street cars, more as a tourist attraction than anything else, bypassing some of the old street car rails you can see in a few places downtown if you look. Somehow though, it won't measure up to the excitement of this kid, many years ago, getting on a trolly in Dallas.
What street cars have you ridden?