Trams, Light Rail and Trolleybuses

[Geoff Bannister]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)" <catlady at ...> wrote:
>
> Geoff wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/39541>:

> > Tramway=street car/trolley car?

Geoff:
I debated whether to reply to a post on this a few days ago and it was a 
case of a long reply or no reply so, being short of time, the latter option 
won.

However, your reply shows so many divergences between UK and US usage  
that I feel I must enter the lists. Your examples show that the words 
"trolley" and "tram" are much more narrowly used in UK English than US.

I speak as a long time transport enthusiast, particularly road and rail, 
long enough to recall rising on first-generation London trams when I 
moved there eat the age of nine.

Catlady:
> I once spent a day looking up the words 'trolley' and 'tram', and they 
basically mean whatever the speaker wants them to mean. It is widely 
said that some electric-powered vehicles are called trolleys as short for 
'trolley car' (on rails) or 'trolley bus' (on rubber tires on the road), 
because 'trolley' is that long metal stick on top of them that draws 
electricity from that overhead wire mentioned by Carol.

Geoff:
The word "trolley" is never used on its own with reference to public 
transport. Most trams had trolley poles (or booms) which, as you say, 
connected them to the overhead wires. Most modern systems use what 
is called a "pantograph", a kind of bent arm which was developed from 
the full diamond shaped version used on older systems. London was an 
exception – a difference it shared with Washington DC in that it had a 
conduit system – a slot in the road which linked to underground electric 
rails. The other use of "trolley" was in "trolleybus".

The other common use of the word is a small wheeled vehicle such as 
an airport trolley, a baggage trolley or platform trolley (at a railway 
station) or a shopping trolley.

Moving on to "tram", there is an old usage in that small four wheeled 
trucks used in mines to shift coal for example were sometimes given 
this name. 

However, as far as the UK is concerned, a tram in the public transport 
sense has only ever been called that – horse tram, steam tram, cable 
tram and electric tram. Trolley car - no. Street car -no. The last first 
generation system to close was Glasgow in 1962. The coastal route 
at Blackpool on the North-west coast of England never closed and is 
the only system which has run all the time.

Aerial systems have never been known as tramways, usually cable 
car system is the phrase used – or chair lift in the case of an open 
car.

The UK systems were closed for various reasons including: political 
interference, taking their profits to reduce local taxation and hence 
leaving nothing for renewal and the fact that they were often seen 
as lower class transport, a hangover from the resistance of the 
"carriage folk" in early days who often blocked cars coming into town 
centres, especially in London and Birmingham.

Catlady:
> There are other electric trains which draw their power from a 'third 
rail', a wire on the same level as the track rather than overhead. Unless 
they are called 'heavy rail' and the overhead ones are called 'light rail', 
I don't know terminology to distinguish them, but I thought 'light rail' 
means it runs on the streets with automobiles and 'heavy rail' means 
it is subway or elevated or on a dedicated railroad right-of-way. 

Geoff:
Clarifying a little, light rail is what it says. the vehicles are lighter in 
construction,they are able to climb steeper gradients and go round 
sharper bends and often do not have a full signaling system but work 
on line-of-sight except in tunnels. the Docklands (mentioned below) 
is a good example of where to see this. 

Also in passing, third rail is not a wire - it is a full size rail. Most lines in 
the UK south and east of a line from London to Weymouth on the South 
coast are third rail because they belonged to the former Southern Railway.
Interestingly, the London Underground system runs on fourth rail, one at 
the side and one in the centre.

However, more recently, modern systems have opened, originally known 
as Light Rail Transit (LRT), a name which I believe originated in North 
America because many were fully segregated unlike systems in Europe 
where some tramways ran in reservations in the middle of dual carriageways 
(median strips in the US?). However, where a mix of segregation and 
street running has returned, we, with our usual bluntness, have started 
to refer to them as trams again as in Manchester and Sheffield! The best 
known fully-segregated line is the Docklands Light Railway in central and 
east London which serves the Canary Wharf financial centre and London 
City Airport while a very good example of  a system including street running 
is the London Tramlink (formerly Croydon Tramlink) which is a very popular 
and heavily used group of lines in South London.

"Tram" has become a very fashionable word.

Catlady:
> However, San Francisco's trademark cable cars, often called trolleys, are 
not electric trains. They are mechanically pulled by an underground metal 
cable (chain). 

Geoff:
Edinburgh had a cable system at one point and Melbourne in Australia had 
them until as late as 1940. There is still a cable system in North Wales which 
operates from Llandudno to the top of the Great Orme – a local mountain. 
This uses a metal rope but the cars cannot detach themselves and are fixed.

Hope that clarifies things a bit!

PS If I haven't bored the pants off you, you might be interested to see some 
of my photos of first and second generation trams in the UK and also London 
trolleybuses. Visit www.geoffbannister.com and go to the Transport of 
Delight section.