Electric trolly 1912.

This trolley system was installed in Hamburg, Germany to help the horses up hills and pull wagons on more level ground. You can just see the pole going from the trolleys up to the wire suspended from the power poles. The hills do not look too steep in these pictures but the second hill is too steep for the bicycle rider seen in the picture so it must be somewhat steep. Also the horses were compelled to pull very heavy loads on the level and any hill was too much for them. In those days horses were truly beasts of burden.
It is also interesting to see the beautiful stone buildings that were build all over Germany over a period of many years. They would have lasted many more years but most of them were destroyed in the disaster called World War II. Today they are all but forgotten.
Today many electric transportation networks have been destroyed and replaced by oil or coal driven machines. If we had green electric power driving our vehicles and trains we could could eliminate a great amount of pollution and global heating gases. Too bad that our political leaders haven't figured this out for 100 years.