Old Pueblo Trolley restores buses and streetcars that once operated on Tucson roads

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Many might have passed by the Old Pueblo Trolley and Bus Museum and not realized the true history it holds. Two men have built their lives around their passions for buses and streetcars, once driven all over Arizona, by making sure the ones that no longer run the roads are still remembered.

The museum serves as more than a place of preserved memories, it’s a place where many of the buses and streetcars have been restored. It’s the nonprofit that runs the museum that makes this happen: The Old Pueblo Trolley. With the help of volunteers and donations, it’s been able to keep its doors open.

The museum has been on the northwest corner of Fourth Avenue and 36th Street since 2016, but the nonprofit has been working to keep the memory of out-of-service buses and streetcars alive since 1983. Gene Caywood is the founder of the nonprofit, and his business partner Mark Hart watches over the museum.

Hart also creates bus and streetcar models for the museum. His passion for buses started when he started driving buses in 1958. He was loyal to the job for 20 years, and has been working with buses ever since. He still has the pocket watch he used on the job and the ticket puncher that was gifted to him in the shape of a heart to match his last name.

The museum holds many memories of his time as a bus driver, and one of the bigger pieces of his past is the bus driven by his friend Tiny. Tiny taught him how to drive buses. He remembered his first time driving a bus.

“I got on the bus and he looked at my pass and he said, ‘Oh you’re going to be a driver?’ He got out of the seat and made me drive to my bus stop,” Hart recalled.

Gene Caywood has been a bus enthusiast his entire life, and eventually found his passion for streetcars as well. Caywood has written a book too, "Hooves & Rails: A History of the Tucson Street Railway 1897-1906". He remembered before the modern streetcar service, the Sun Link, replaced the previous one.

“The last night we operated was Halloween of 2011. And so we had to vacate the street and now they run the modern streetcars. So now we have this nice building and we have everything preserved here,” said Caywood.

Hart and Caywood would like to see the streetcars that have been restored run through the streets of South Tucson. For now, it’s just an idea, but they hope to lay tracks down, as a start, leading out of the museum.

“One of these days we’re going to have tracks running out of this same building to run some streetcars here through South Tucson on South Fourth Avenue and 36th Street,” said Hart.

Located at 250 E. 36th Street, the museum is free to visit on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Contact (520)792-1802 for additional questions.