Third Avenue Railway was purchased by New York City Omnibus Corporation in 1956, and transferred the remaining transit operating franchises to subsidiary Surface Transportation, Inc.

Because of a ban on overhead trolley wires in Manhattan, streetcars collected power from a conduit in between the rails, by means of a plow, a method also used in Washington, D.C., and London.

The 1908 collapse of the Metropolitan Railway send Third Avenue Railroad into foreclosure, with Frederick Wallingford Whitridge named receiver.

[2] Labor unrest caused strikes that disrupted trolley service system-wide, and Whitridge and his policies were under scrutiny.

Huff was an experienced transit executive, working his way through streetcar lines in California, Maryland, and Virginia, before returning to New York City.

William Steinway died in 1896, and the streetcar lines were sold to the New York and Queens County Railway.

Equipment was leased from TARS in an effort to improve service, however, declining revenues and a failing physical plant made these attempts futile.

Chartered in 1891, the Westchester Electric Railroad was a subsidiary of the Union Railway, and made up the majority of the local streetcar lines in New Rochelle, Pelham, and Mount Vernon.

A joint trolley terminal operated with the New York and Stamford Railway was located on Mechanic Street in New Rochelle.

The city of White Plains, the county seat of Westchester, marked TARS northernmost trolley operations.

The railway was sold at foreclosure to Richard Sutro, who set up the Westchester Street Railroad to take over the property.

The WSR was sold back to Third Avenue Railway in 1926, and renamed Westchester Street Transportation Company.

Ownership of the franchise was directed by John Johnston Railroad Company until 1912 when lines were conveyed to the New York, Westchester & Connecticut Traction.

The line was operated by Third Avenue Railway and consisted of nine routes serving New York State's third largest city.

Litigation over the transit franchises extended streetcar service in Westchester County for years after the Manhattan and Bronx lines were converted.

The Yonkers Trolley Barn at the foot of Main Street, built by TARS in 1903 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is the only remaining such structure in the county.

[5] As early as the 1920s, public officials were advocating for the increase in bus service as the answer to relieving traffic congestion in New York City.

New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia did not feel that trolleys were agreeable to the modern image he was trying to portray.

While streamlined PCC trolley cars were introduced in nearby Brooklyn in 1936, TARS did not have the resources to procure new equipment.

After years of litigation regarding transit franchises and purchases of stock by board members, Victor McQuistion had taken control of the company by 1946, and implemented a plan to replace the remaining streetcar routes with buses.

Third Avenue Transit made national news on March 28, 1947, when diesel bus 1310 and driver William Lawrence Cimillo went missing from its normal route and did not return to the garage.

The bus was discovered in Hollywood, Florida, on March 31, when Cimillo sent a telegram back to headquarters in New York requesting cash.

An experienced transit executive, he was hired to implement the orderly conversion of the remaining trolley lines to bus operation.

[7] Slowed briefly by wartime restrictions on gasoline and tires, all streetcar lines in Manhattan and the Bronx were converted to bus by the end of 1948.

Compensation for the condemnation of its bus routes in New York City was paid in 1970, and Fifth Avenue Coach Lines emerged from receivership in 1971.