Baltimore Transit

Company History: BTCO ran a dense network of streetcar lines in Baltimore, Maryland. The company was organized in 1935 to take over the assets of the bankrupt United Railways & Electric Company. To keep freight trains out of the streets, the predecessors of BTCO had built the line to broad gauge, 5’ 4.5” to be exact, a gauge which seems to be unique in the world. BTCO became a subsidiary of National City Lines in 1948. Like their other properties, National City planned to replace all of the streetcars with buses. The last BTCO streetcar ran in regular service in 1963.

Successor/Parent History: National City Lines, Inc. (NCL) was a public transportation company. The company grew out of the Fitzgerald brothers' bus operations, founded in Minnesota, United States in 1920 as a modest local transport company operating two buses. Part of the Fitzgerald's operations were reorganized into a holding company in 1936, and later expanded about 1938 with equity funding from General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California and Phillips Petroleum for the express purpose of acquiring local transit systems throughout the United States in what became known as the General Motors streetcar conspiracy. The company formed a subsidiary, Pacific City Lines in 1937 to purchase streetcar systems in the western United States. National City Lines, and Pacific City Lines were indicted in 1947 on charges of conspiring to acquire control of a number of transit companies, and of forming a transportation monopoly for the purpose of 'Conspiring to monopolize sales of buses and supplies to companies owned by National City Lines'. They were acquitted on the first charge but not the second in 1949.

From Wikipedia

Brief History: The U.S. is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities are New York, a global finance and culture center, and capital Washington, DC. Midwestern metropolis Chicago is known for influential architecture and on the west coast, Los Angeles' Hollywood is famed for filmmaking.