The "housing alongside electric railroad" is to this day known as the Merrill Park neighborhood of Milwaukee, and in 1936 it was just about all Irish. (None of the buildings at the bottom of the hill are there now.) Many of the men living in Merrill Park worked in the Milwaukee Road Shops, just out of view on the left side of the picture.

  
[The Milwaukee Electric Railway & Light Co. was the largest electric railway and electric utility system in Wisconsin.   It combined several of the earlier horsecar, steam dummy and streetcars lines into one system.   It's Milwaukee streetcar lines soon ran on most major streets and served most areas of the city.  Its interurban lines reached throughout southeastern Wisconsin. They also operated the streetcar lines in Appleton, Kenosha and Racine as well as doing their own switching operations at the Port Washington and Lakeside power plants.        TM operated its own shops, which could repair, rebuild or build complete streetcars, interurbans and freight locos.  They also designed many innovations, such as an articulated three-truck train.        The first electric streetcar in Milwaukee operated on Wells Street April 3, 1890.  The last streetcar in Milwaukee (and Wisconsin) operated on Wells Street on March 2, 1958.        The first interurban ran between Milwaukee and Kenosha on June 1, 1897.  Other lines soon reached out to Watertown, Burlington and East Troy.  In 1922 TM acquired the Milwaukee Northern Railway and added their Milwaukee to Sheboygan interurban line to the system.](http://www.trainweb.org/twerhs/tmerl.html)

[The Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Milwaukee_Electric_Railway_and_Light_Company)

[https://www.google.com/maps/@43.0308517,-87.986482,3a,75y,69.93h,89.34t](https://www.google.com/maps/@43.0308517,-87.986482,3a,75y,69.93h,89.34t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sbTInxHaUBG3HjBAorrgppg!2e0)

Milwaukee electric railroad. Yesterday and today.