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| Author: | Joshua K. Blay [ Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:49 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Trolley Gauges |
What are some of the more popular trolley gauges? How common is 5' 2"? The museum where I work has a horse car of that gauge, and it was last on rails around 1925. Thanks very much! Joshua |
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| Author: | scrmcurator [ Fri Mar 04, 2005 5:42 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Trolley Gauges |
Pennsylvania was mostly 5' 2.25". New Orleans used (still does, I think) this gauge as well. Baltimore used 5' 2.5". The purpose of the wider gauge was usually to keep freight trains off the streets, although the stated purpose in Baltimore was so wagons could use the rails too. Los Angeles had some narrow gauge cars, they were either 36" or 42", can't recall which. Most systems used standard gauge of 56.5", though. |
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| Author: | Frank Hicks [ Fri Mar 04, 2005 5:50 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Trolley Gauges |
The most popular gauge by far was standard gauge, of course; most streetcar lines and virtually all interurban lines were standard gauge. Many streetcar systems in Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, used 5'2-1/2" gauge, which was known as "Pennsylvania gauge." New Orleans also used (and still uses) this wide gauge. Los Angeles, Denver and Portland, Oregon ran 3'6" gauge streetcars; St. Louis cars were 4'10" gauge; and Toronto streetcars were (and still are) 4'10-7/8" gauge. Baltimore streetcars were very wide gauge, 5'4-1/2". A few other systems like Savannah (5') and Columbus (5'2") used other miscellaneous odd gauges. |
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| Author: | Phil Mulligan [ Fri Mar 04, 2005 6:04 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Trolley Gauges |
By far the most common gauge for trolleys was RR standard gauge. PA trolley lines were mostly wide gauge with variations. Philadelphia (city tracks, ex-PRT) is 5' 2 1/4" while Red Arrow (P&WCT) and Pittsburgh are 5' 2 1/2. P&W is RR gauge. Most wide gauge companies were 5' 2 1/2" but Altoona was 5' 3" and NEPA lines (Allentown - Scranton - W-B) were RR gauge, as is L&WV. Note that SEPTA inherited three gauges for its light rail. Baltimore was 5' 4" BSM still is but new light rail is RR gauge. Narrow gauge trolleys were generally 3' 6" and may have inherited infrastructure from cable lines. SF cable is 3' 6" but SF trolleys are RR gauge. |
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| Author: | wilkinsd [ Fri Mar 04, 2005 8:33 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Trolley Gauges |
Of course, the reason some trolley lines were not standard gauge is that many were built before there was a standard gauge in the U.S. Northern railroads began to conform to standard gauge during the Civil War, and the remaining 5' gauge southern railroads changed on a single day in 1886. Louisville's streetcar and interurban operation was mostly 5' gauge as account of the first horsecar service taking over the trackage of the uncompleted Lexington and Ohio railroad. The L&O built a section of track down the middle of Main St. in Louisville. When the Louisville and Interurban built its small network of lines radiating from Louisville, they built them to 5', which wasn't good in terms of freight interchange with the steam railroads. They did operate one line shared with the L&N, necessitating dual gauge track in downtown Louisville, which later allowed the Interstate Service Company, later Indiana Railroad to operate through to downtown Louisville. |
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| Author: | scrmcurator [ Fri Mar 04, 2005 9:36 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Trolley Gauges |
Phil Mulligan wrote: PA trolley lines were mostly wide gauge with variations. Philadelphia (city tracks, ex-PRT) is 5' 2 1/4" while Red Arrow (P&WCT) and Pittsburgh are 5' 2 1/2. P&W is RR gauge. Most wide gauge companies were 5' 2 1/2" but Altoona was 5' 3" and NEPA lines (Allentown - Scranton - W-B) were RR gauge, as is L&WV.
Note that SEPTA inherited three gauges for its light rail. The Market-Frankford elevated is wide gauge, as well. This is why the old P&W has never been combined with the El -- one or the other would have to be regauged. The two lines also use different third rail systems, too -- the El has the shoe running under the third rail while the P&W has it on top. The Lindenwold line and the Broad Street Subway are both standard gauge and both use the same third rail system as the P&W. I've heard many different claims about the differences between the Red Arrow trolley lines and the city lines -- slightly different gauges, different flanges, etc. I've never seen any difinitive proof that the Red Arrow and the city systems are, in fact, different. I *have* heard that Red Arrow wanted to use the El to access Center City at one point, but was kept out by the PRR. During my days at the Penn's Landing Trolley I made a bit of a study of this, but returning south sort of changed my focus. |
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| Author: | WP&Ymike [ Fri Mar 04, 2005 10:57 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Trolley Gauges |
Some trolleys are 3ft, the one in Whitehorse is; it came from Lisbon |
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| Author: | Brian Norden [ Fri Mar 04, 2005 11:06 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Trolley Gauges |
One thing that has not yet been stated is that many of the broad-guage trolley lines were built that way because of local requirments. To get the franchise, or permission, to construct the streetcar line the local government required the broad gauge. This was to keep the local streetcar company from hauling regular railroad freight cars through the city streets. In the Los Angeles area many of the early horse car lines and cable car lines were built to 42" gauge. When they were electrified the track was not rebuilt so the streetcar lines kept the same 42" gauge. In fact, the early LA area interurbans were also built with the same 42" gauge -- in time, these were rebuilt to standard. One LA area steam road, Los Angeles & Redondo, started out as 36" gauge. Then in the early 1900s it electrified and converted to 42" gauge to be able to operate all the way into downtown LA. With the 1910-11 consolidation of local and interurban lines this company was split with part of it going to the 42" gauge city system (Los Angeles Railway) and part going to the standard gauge Pacific Electric and was standard gauged. |
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| Author: | Bob Kutella [ Sat Mar 05, 2005 6:03 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Trolley Gauges - More to the story |
Yes, a lot of franchise agreements were set up with requirements to forestall use of the street trackage for standard RR freight. But once the question of gauge was settled, there was a wide variation in wheel tread /flange profiles. So called 'streetcar wheels' often varied from the more or less railroad standard of 5 inch tread and 1 inch deep flange (nominal dimensions) to four inch tread or even three inch tread and with much lower flanges. The lower flanges would seem a problem but with the use of girder rail that was somewhat eliminated since both wheels could serve to help steer the car. Other items in the track structure had to be customized to suit the chosen wheel profiles including back to back distance of guardrails, and any turnout or crossing frogs. These often were made with very shallow flangeways - so that a car with narrow wheel treads would not 'fall into' the gap in the rails at a frog and be supported across this gap by running on the flange. A real headache for preservationists who often have to address these problems when trying to figure out how to operate a wide variety of cars on a single museum line. Bob Kutella |
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| Author: | wilkinsd [ Sat Mar 05, 2005 9:58 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Trolley Gauges - More to the story |
Bob, How does IRM operate the various street railway, rapid transit, and interurban equipment on the same line with little or no trouble? This was one of the things that amazed me when I visited. Bob does make a good point, at the Museum of Transportation, the Trolley volunteers used trucks from a CTA 6000 series L car when they regauged the PTC PCC from broad gauge. The truck allowed quick conversion to standard gauge, and also has railroad standard flanges, so it could negotiate the track work at the museum with ease. It's probably going to be the same solution when we get around to the operational restoration of the St. Louis PCC car. We have to use wedges and blocks to get it through a switch frog. |
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| Author: | Bob Kutella [ Sun Mar 06, 2005 7:16 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Trolley Gauges - More to the story |
Well, we have developed a more or less standard wheel gauge for equipment that operates 'regularly'. In the case of Chicago Surface Lines streetcars that has meant re-wheeling since the CSL relied on tram wheel profiles. Not a big deal if we want to run them since in many cases the existing wheels were 'used up' and needed replacing anyway. But changing the profile also means new profile brake shoes and sometimes modifying or adjusting the brake rigging and truck clearances. Our operating Chicago PCC has resilient wheels so as they wear only the rim assemblies need be changed and any braking there is inboard in the truck. Some cars have 'compromise' wheels being 4 inch tread and only slightly smaller flanges. (For example Milwaukee streetcars) As long as the back to back distance is within narrow limits these work ok. When switching and occasionally moving cars with the narrow three inch wheels and small flanges, great care is exercised, and occasional use of a filler bar at frogs may be needed if a car is stubborn or there are several back and forth moves over the same track and turnout. Most of the interurbans use standard tread and flange as they also developed and survived in part to interchange freight business - such as the North Shore, 'Roaring' Elgin, Illinois Terminal, South Shore, etc. Yea, even the lowly Sand Springs Ry survives today as a shortline. All of the Chicago Rapid Transit equipment has always used standard wheel profiles. All running on the same railroad - yes. But since they are trolleys, we have not discussed the height of the contact wire, tracking of poles through wire frogs with the cars having widely divergent length and geometry, the use of current collectors being either trolley wheels, steel insert sliding shoes, carbon insert sliding shoes, pans or bow collectors, - - - You get the idea. Bob Kutella |
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| Author: | Phil Mulligan [ Mon Mar 07, 2005 11:58 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Trolley Gauges - More to the story |
To continue the thread on Philadelphia gauges, here is the list: System gauge profile City trolley 62.25 trolley Elevated (MFSE) 62.25 Railroad Broad St. 56.5 RR (handles interchange) Red Arrow (P&WCT) 62.5 compromise P&W 56.5 RR (handled interchange) PATCO 56.5 RR (handles interchange) I'm told P&WCT cars could run on their own wheels from the Brill plant to P&WCT, until the 63rd and Market connection was severed. On the other hand, P&WCT car 73 was trucked to ex-PRT Callowhill Depot as part of the 1976 Bicentennial tourtram project but could not stay on the track there. |
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| Author: | JimBoylan [ Mon Mar 07, 2005 6:50 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Trolley Gauges - More to the story |
[I previously posted this on SubTalk. It does cite a city with 5' 2" trolleys!] Some places got wild in their lack of standardization. Trenton, New Jersey had 4 different trolley gauges at once, with 2 different cases of dual gauge track. Trenton & Mercer County Traction (Trenton Transit) used an odd gauge of 5' 2". Public Service Railways (Public Service Co-ordinated Transport) used Standard Gauge of 4' 8-1/2" for their North Jersey lines and an even 5' (the Russian and Confederate gauge) for their South Jersey lines. The 2 groups used dual gauge track to share a Trenton terminal. Pennsylvania-New Jersey Railways (Bucks County Traction and Trenton-Princeton Traction Company) used Standard Gauge of 4' 8-1/2" for their intrastate line to Princeton and the "Pennsylvania Broad Gauge" in its Philadelphia variation of 5' 2-1/4" for their interstate lines to Pennsylvania. They originally had a stretch of single dual gauge track in the center of the 2-lane street to reach the joint terminal. This was later replaced by 2 single tracks, one for each gauge, in the same 2-lane, 2-way street! While the 2 different companies' Standard Gauge lines didn't correct directly, they both handled steam railroad interchange freight traffic, and connected to the national railroad system via 2 different railroads. Cincinnati, Georgetown, & Portsmouth (Ohio) trolley line had 3 gauges - standard, narrow, and Cincinnati's broad trolley gauge, with some wild triple-gauge track. Louisville (Kentucky) Railways had 5' gauge city trolleys, but had some dual gauge track with Indiana Railroad interurbans. The IRR cars used the Big 4 (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis) Railroad bridge and tracks to cross the Ohio River, but LRy trolleys on the suburban "Daisy Line" to Indiana shared 4 rail gantlet track with steam trains on a different railroad bridge. Columbus, Ohio (and possibly Salt Lake City, Utah) had 3-rail dual gauge trolley tracks, standard and broad gauges. San Francisco, California had some dual gauge track to allow standard gauge trolley work cars to tow cable cars on flat cars to the narrow gauge cable car barn on a street that already had a cable car track. The last traces of this track disappeared in the 1982 cable car system reconstruction. Los Angeles, California trolleys were 3' 6" gauge (because that was the gauge of the cable cars they replaced!) There was some dual-gauge track with the standard gauge Pacific Electric interurbans. Denver, Colorado had the same 2 different gauges for similar reasons, but I don't know about dual-gauge track. Kutztown, Pennsylvania had some dual gauge standard and Pennsylvania Broad gauge track, because the Allentown & Reading interurban line used the gauges of its terminal cities in the 2 ends of its line. Kutztown carbarn was the meeting of the gauges. Reading trolleys were broad gauge, Allentown's were standard. Suburban Toronto, Ontario briefly had some 4-rail track when a "Radial" trolley line that handled interchange steam railroad freight cars was converted to the Toronto city gauge of 4' 10-7/8" (very close to 1.5 metres!) before the freight service could be abandoned! Altoona, Pennsylvania trolleys were 5' 3" (the Irish railway gauge!), Baltimore, Maryland was 5' 4", and Bay Area Rapid Transit in California is 5' 6" (by coincidence the Spanish and Portuguese railroad gauge). BART was designed by a consultant! The Irish railway (and probably tram) gauge was a bureaucrat's compremise: he took the average of all the competing proposals and issued a decree. The modern just abandoned Detroit (Mich.) trolleys were 9 decimeter gauge, because that was the gauge of most of their used trolley cars, which came from Lisbon, Portugal. San Antonio (Tex.) used 4' gauge for passenger trolleys (as found in some Welsh coal mines), but standard gauge for the freight trolleys of the Texas Transportation Co. I don't know if there was any shared track. The Interboro Rapid Transit was probably built standard gauge to allow thru running on the Bronx Els and the Long Island Rail Road. Somewhere I read that the West Side & Yonkers Patent Elevated Railway (the 1869 start of the 9th Ave. El) was 4' 9" gauge. Dunkirk, New York passed a local law that no railroad coming into town could have the same gauge as any other line. The Erie was 6', the New York Central was standard, and the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern was 4' 10" gauge. Bradford and Leeds England used 2 different tram (streetcar) gauges - standard and 4', but had some through running using cars with splined axles and sliding wheels! Later, after through passenger service stopped, that "S" shaped section of gauge change track at the municipal boundary was used by the freight trackless trolley's "skate" since there wasn't a negative wire at that point. The former tram companies' parcel delivery service outlasted the through trams long enough to go trackless! |
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