Queen Anne Counterbalance

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  • Address
    N of W Roy St, Queen Anne Ave N, Queen Anne

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The streetcar that chugged up and down the steep grade along Queen Anne Ave started operating on overhead-wire electricity in 1900, but it still needed some help to manage the hill. So engineers designed a system of counterweights - a 16-ton train that ran in a tunnel beneath the street would go up when the cable car went down and vice versa. The cable cars were retired in 1943, but the underground tunnels are still there.