Capital Traction Company

The company's streetcars connected the Washington, D.C., neighborhoods of Georgetown, Capitol Hill, the Armory, and Mount Pleasant; and the suburb of Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Congress tried to deal with this fractured transit system by requiring them to accept transfers and set standard pricing, and by allowing them to use one another's track.

[2] The merger also took advantage of a peculiar facet of the Rock Creek Railway, whose revenues were rather sparse but whose charter placed no limits on the amount of money that might be raised through the sale of stock and bonds.

"This providential clause was turned to good advantage in the reorganization of the prosperous Washington and Georgetown Railroad which was severely crippled by its fixed capital ceiling of only $500,000", according to a 1966 history of D.C.

[3] Within months of the merger, the new Capital Traction Company began building an ambitious Waddy Wood-designed car barn at 3600 M Street NW in Georgetown.

[8] In the spring of 1899, Capital Traction replaced the underground conduit system that delivered power to its streetcars where overhead trolley poles were forbidden.

The Love conduit system and its balky trolley wheels originally installed by the Rock Creek Railway[9] were changed to the more standard and less expensive contact shoe.

[14] Streetcars were unionized in 1916 when Local 689 of the Amalgamated Association of Street, Electric Railway and Motor Coach Employees of America won recognition after a three-day strike.

[15] As the Key Bridge was under construction in the early 1920s, Capital Traction sought to expand its operations across the Potomac River to Virginia.

The company struck a deal with the Washington & Old Dominion Railroad, which had operated from Virginia to a terminal next to Capital Traction's Georgetown car barn: the W&OD did not seek rights to operate on the new bridge, and in exchange, Capital Traction built a new terminal for the Virginia railroad next to its Rosslyn loop.

This 4-wheel, electric motor car was one of sixteen built for the Capital Traction Company by the American Car Company. Car #303 was assigned to the 7th Street line, which ran from the Wharves to Boundary. It was used as a motor car and regularly pulled a light trailer car until its retirement from regular service in 1913. This car, on display at the Museum of American History is the only Washington streetcar still in the District.
The Decatur Street Car Barn , built in 1906 by Capital Traction. This barn would later become WMATA's Northern division until it closed in 2019 for rehabilitation.
The former Capital Traction Power House on the Georgetown waterfront. Built in 1910-11 it was shut down in 1933, decommissioned in 1943 and demolished in 1968.