Photo by tophermathews

For years, a rusting green trolley stood outside the entrance to the famous Glen Echo Amusement Park along MacArthur Boulevard in Montgomery County. As of this week, though, it disappeared.

The Gazette reports that the trolley, which was donated to the National Park Service in 2005 by Philadelphia’s transit agency and was the same type that operated along the Georgetown-Glen Echo line in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, was sold because the costs of restoring it would have been prohibitively high.

The cost of restoring the trolley, estimated at more than $100,000, along with failed attempts to raise money, influenced the decision to remove the trolley, said Polly Angelakis, National Park Service site manager at Glen Echo Park.

“The idea was to make it an interpretive exhibit about trolleys,” she said.

The trolley was sold to General Machine & Tool Company in Cheverly, which says it plans on restoring and keeping the historic trolley.

Bethesda-based blogger and streetcar enthusiast Robert Dyer was none-too-happy with the news. He claims that NPS didn’t even try to raise money to refurbish the trolley, and overstated how much it would actually cost to do so. Even better, he uncovered the eBay listing that the General Services Administration had originally used to try and sell the trolley. Dyer argues that NPS and Montgomery County have dropped the ball on restoring Glen Echo Park to its original glory, calling the park as it stands a “wasted resource.” He even advocates for the possibility of reviving the line to Georgetown—the right-of-way still exists, after all.

Glen Echo Park remains a powerful symbol of the fight against segregation in the region. In 1960, students from Howard University participated in a sit-in on the carousel to protest segregated admission policies to the park. Five students were arrested, and in 1961 the policies were lifted.