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The Tramcar is a trackless train service running on the Boardwalk in the Cape May County, New Jersey communities of Wildwood and North Wildwood. The service, which began on June 11, 1949, takes passengers along the two-mile long Wildwood boardwalk. Service is available at all points along the boardwalk, from the beginning at Cresse Avenue to the end at 16th Avenue in North Wildwood.
Description
The Tramcar is colored yellow and blue, though sometimes contains other colors due to advertisements. It is well known for the phrase "Watch the tramcar, please," a pre-recorded alert voiced by local Floss Stingel in 1971 to clear the tramcar's path. The tramcar fare is $3.00. At a haunted house ride at one of the piers, there is an old tramcar at the side of the track that has a skeleton in it that says, "Watch the tramcar, please!!", as a parody of the boardwalk tramcar alert.
Operating hours are 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. The Tramcar started running five years after the boardwalk was made. The original fare was 10 cents one way. A round-trip tram-car ride takes approximately 1 hour. Each tram car runs on a 36 DC-volt battery that weighs more than 2,000 pounds. The batteries are charged each night and can run for about seven or eight hours at a time. Several of the tram cars running on the Boardwalk are the same ones that were built for the 1939 World's Fair in New York City. The tram cars carry about half a million people up and down the Boardwalk each year. From 1998 to 2000, Wildwood hosted the annual Great Tram Car Race between entertainers Al Alberts and Cozy Morley.
