Photo shows a San Francisco cable car, but the text says "trolley car"......and the video shows a gas-powered ersatz trolley.

Sloan

http://www.cbs59.com/story.cfm?func=vie ... ryid=48326

That violates one of the three rules I give to friends planning a visit to the Bay Area:
1. Never call The City "Frisco"!
2. Never call a cable car a "trolley"
3. Never say to a BART employee "This reminds me of the Monorail at Disneyland".
Technically, cable cars ARE "streetcars", but only electric cars powered by overhead wire are "trolleys". The city of El Reno OK has a self-propelled (propane fueled GMC 454 V-8) streetcar that they call "The only rail-based trolley ride in Oklahoma". The car was SEPTA 165, one of the "Strafford" cars on the Red Arrow Norristown line--where it was electric powered, but by a third rail. Only in its earliest days did it have a trolley pole. And those bogus buses with fake streetcar bodies--they are to transit what Chuck E. Cheese is to pizza.

You know today's reporters, never let facts get in the way of a good story.

Doug vV

Regarding definitions:

To be even more narrow in definition, is not a trolley *only* a streetcar that is powered via a trolley pole & trolley wire? I do not believe, strictly, that a car with pantographs and flat pan wire is a "trolley". Definitely this is debatable.

Generally a streetcar *must* employ street trackage somewhere on its route. A road with entirely private right of way would not be a streetcar.

The fuzziest definition is likely interurban. They can employ street trackage, and some streetcars have private segments, so having private right-of-way is not the defining characteristic. Distance might come into play, or perhaps the role of connecting suburban cities to each other or to an urban core. The word suggests that it connects cities, not just parts of one city, but this would mean that many streetcars are also interurbans.

Close.

A trolley (as I understand it) is anything with a trolley pole used for power collection be it street car or interurban or bus.

A street car can be a 4 or 8-wheeled car that is horse or electric or gas or cable or steam powered as long as it travels mostly in the streets and is steel wheels on steel rails.

An interurban runs between towns and citys (between urban areas). I usually think of it as electrified (3rd rail or trolley) but not steam or gas or diesel.

So, you can have:

1) horse street car
2) electric (battery) street car
3) cable street car
4) gas (mechanical, hydraulic or electric) street car
5) electric trolley street car
6) electric trolley bus (rubber tired)
7) electric interurban
8) electric trolley interurban
9) electric 3rd-rail car (not a street car - 'EL' or subway type grade separated)
10) electric 3rd-rail interurban car
11) gas or diesel bus (rubber tired).

I am sure that there are other types that existed. Some equipment had both 3rd rail and trolley and/or pans for instance.

Confused now?

Doug vV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQyrd1BwusQ

You know, some might say that if the public doesn't know or care about the difference between a cable car, trolley, streetcar, interurban, or bus, then it is our problem. It is our problem for caring, or alternately, our problem for failing to educate the public and the press. Of course, it does not help that there is a small industry devoted to manufacturing shuttle bus "trolleys" so that little towns can think they are going to start attracting tourists and business just like San Francisco.

Incidentally, an electric bus is probably a trolley as well. Let's make a list!

My comment came too late. Dougvv already made a list, but I don't see Electric Conduit Streetcar.

In England "trolley" means an electric trolley bus (trolley coach, trackless trolley) or a small four-wheeled hand-propelled cart (e.g. serving cart on train or aircraft, shopping cart.) Then there's the question of whether the "overhead contact system" is a "trolley wire" if the cars and/or locomotives use modern current collectors rather than trolley poles (or how about the "J" line in San Francisco that can work with both kinds). I should also mention the "San Diego Trolley" light rail system, which has always used "pans", not poles. Here in southern California we had the late Walter Abbenseth, who pioneered saving Pacific Electric cars. He detested the term "trolley car"; to him an electric car was either a streetcar or an interurban, never a "trolley".

I worked for a newspaper after art school and interned at another in college as a staff writer. Often you get tossed a note pad and told to go cover something and that your deadline is later that day and probably after you've just come back from another story. You just sometimes don't have the time to do the research.

But to further confuse the issue, in Chicago at least, the “third rail” is technically the “trolley rail.”

First a side note about the practical side. Honestly most of the public would perceive any vintage (early 1900s) appearing transit vehicle as a trolley. From a common usage standpoint, really, the use of "trolley" to describe the cable cars is likely acceptable. If it happened in, say, TRAINS however, it would be a major oopsie.

A lot of journalism adheres to the "good enough" standard, as P51 mentioned.

Now back to the transit foam -- what might a commuter line with self propelled non-electric cars be? Technically it is not an interurban by Doug's list. Gas car line? Commuter railroad?

A couple of clarifications.

1) I did not make it clear that the reporter(s) are not always to blame, it is the companies that are producing the news shows that I blame. They go for the oh-wow factor and the blood&gore&guts factor as opposed to the reporting good news to provide a balanced view of what life is really like. I apologise for the error. The Banks County News (weekly news paper here in GA), reports ALL police reports in the county. It includes reports or (for instance) a fender bender at the Walmart, an ex-husband running in the nude in the back yard of his ex-wife's trailer and so forth. Big cities and national networks get more and more into the ratings games to bring in profits.

2) As for general usage, trolley is used by many outside our hobby to represent anything moving people in public streets.

This word redefinition, is like the older definitions of liberal and conservative. Liberal means willing to change or promoting change and conservative means reluctant to change. Using these definitions, in the 1960's, the US liberal direction was towards socialism and the USSR was towards free-market. The US conservatives were wanting to keep free-market and the USSR was wanting to keep socialism.

Today, many use the word LIBERAL as a curse.

Of course, the usage of DO has changed. It used to be that everyone used the correct verb for an action - let's have lunch. Now DO is a work-anywhere lazy man's verb - let's do lunch.

FOR RAILROAD CONTENT, when I helped design MARTA here in Atlanta in 1973-1978, "heavy rail" was separate track subway or EL - typically electrified.
"commuter rail" was typically non-electrified gas or diesel mechanical or electric drive rail that shared freight railroads.
These two seem to have changed a bit to commuter rail using more typical locomotive and car trains whereas heavy rail seems to be MU or RDC type equipment.

Light rail seems to confuse the public. Engineers (civil) and politicians use it as a euphemism to mean the interurban or street car since trolley car seems to carry the old-fashion out-of-date not workable context with most of the public who is railroad illiterate.

Here in Atlanta, they wanted to put a light rail line alongside CSX to Emory University to connect it to downtown. The public outcry against light rail was unbelievable. The plans were eventually scrapped. The main reason was the people commented that their neighborhoods would be cut in half by trains. I fully believe that they were thinking in terms of heavy rail fenced ROW.

Oh Well.

Doug vV

I don't think this is just 'idle chatter'. People do get confused.

Whether you like it or not, the 'enemy' has adapted the word. The widespread use of the diesel-powered busses decorated up to look like 'trolleys' has taken the word over. If you say 'trolley', people now think 'bus that looks like a trolley'. That's particularly evident in any city that has one, they've been advertising them like that for years.

Now, bring in a real one. What do you call it? That's vexed us, and we've taken to calling them 'Historic Trolleys', or better '_____ Streetcars'. Today, what you almost need to say is 'electric streetcars', because that differentiates from the busses and emphasizes the electric part.

That's been a particular issue in Savannah, where the 'trolley' busses are used all over the historic downtown. So the converted Melbourne W5 is the "Savannah Streetcar". That seems to be sticking, and differentiating, sufficiently. And to further muddy the waters, it is the rebuilt hybrid vehicle designed for 600v overhead AND self-propulsion, so if it has a live trolley pole and doesn't actually use it (yet), is it still a trolley??

I can't fault the media too badly, they're getting the message we're trying to promote there, but it hasn't been easy:
http://savannahnow.com/node/633141

What? The media is misleading the public? Getting facts wrong?

Get outta here!

Think I've said this before, but I suggest "themebus" for the foolish looking things that some people call trolleys.