Another option to consider if this is a park proposal, would be a park train. For a run of a mile or more, though, I would try to find a "real" park train, like the currently abandoned Anacortes Railway (Comments with the video clip below suggest there is an attempted revival or preservation effort of some sort going on).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wAKH5zAZR0

Another option to consider in the case of something that is in a town--and this is NOT something I would recommend for either the park or railroad museum, and would consider it a poor choice even for the town--would be a vintage diesel bus service. Those GMC "old look" buses apparently do have something of a fan base, and they are a part of transit history:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOyz_h_Cud8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjOC1bXadXY

Dave
As far as Charlotte is concerned, I live in Waxhaw, just South of Charlotte and I am all too familiar with the ridiculous nature of the light rail's chapter of a continuing soap opera chock full of red herring politics. My favorite surrealistic objection came from Pineville's mayor who would not allow the planners to broach his town, in order to expand into Union county ( the fastest growing area) which has one of the worst cases of four lane suburban sprawl and accompanying automobile traffic. Malls with jammed huge parking lots with cars side by side. His objection? He wanted to keep Pineville pedestrian friendly. (?) I agree with the value of economic development, a compelling case based on early interurban history wherein many an interurban held real estate and one hand washed the other. Pineville, on the other hand made every zoning error in relation to planning I have ever seen and so the resulting development is an automotive no man's land.
In the case of the trolley bus, I kept my opinion in the context of the one mile route in a park versus a true citywide system in a broader context.

I've seen fewer pedestrian friendly places than Pineville....too many cars zooming through too little road to try to cross streets!

I do understand your point...but it seems to me that the development influencing impact of just wires VS wires and tracks might be worth come interest. It's not been on the radar as far as I'm aware in Charlotte. Still interested in if it has made any impact anywhere else.

The park thing....I think it's more about branding than about any practical issue. Disney uses streetcars, steam trains, monorials, steamboat (though not any more), and it works because their park has several differently branded subparks / clusters of attractions. Making seamless transitions between differently themed areas is an interesting dilemma, but if anybody can solve that, it's Disney. Aging boomers will need more transportation help and are an important customer base - they bring the grandkids.

I wouldn't use busses in a railroad park, steam trains in a trolley park, American single level busses in a British themed park, or any of the above in a water park.

dave

There were no Luxury Limo busses in 1914

Why do I want to ride another bus again? Riding a schoolbus is packem in, getem there. Think about the rider experience.

What you want is a getaway from the daily drivel, a leisurely park ride down memory lane. Actually, some streetcar systems built parks for the trolleys to hoist passengers to, ride rollercoasters, its time for a fun day.

Agreed. For a few years before the eastern half of Central Ave at IRM was paved, the trolley buses were not operated at all, due to all the dust from the gravel road infiltrating anything and everything on the buses.
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Yes, even a 4 motor Birney would be more likely to have a simpler electrical system than a 1 motor trolleybus. A bus would also add the complications and expenses of rubber tires, shock absorbers, and drum brakes.

Jeff

There is a short video on YouTube demonstrating a trolley bus operating in a museum environment (at IRM). They are big! Could be a little unnerving for pedestrians with kids, but kind of neat in their own way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28jcvPG5Hbg

It would be interesting to compare the costs of each as projected costs, in terms of capital costs and then operating cost if you take personal preferences out of the evaluation as my critical assumption is, as always, money and being pragmatic. The funding of this theoretical project is unidentified. I would daresay that a vintage bus on a short run with a captive audience ( without the presumption of fares within a park) running on trolley wire would intrigue curiosity because we are not talking about peers but the general public. Most of the public has some awareness of streetcars but I would venture a guess few have been exposed to a trolley bus. As far as rarity when you compare the two options, operating trolley buses compared to operating streetcars, the operation of buses running on overhead wire is rare. I laud IRM for recognizing this reality. Running on anything other than pavement would be begging for operating and maintenance issues.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNfqXL_0usg

I think so, but this is a hypothetical question since the last new trolleybus line in the United States was the 31 Balboa, and that went in around 1992. San Francisco government operates outside the normal laws of economics, so this tells us nothing. (realistically, the parallel 38 Geary is actually too busy to electrify. There were other routes that already ran under trolley wire for much of their length, but the neighbors cried about losing service if the power went out.)

San Francisco also bet the farm on battery-trolley technology where the buses can yank their own poles down and venture off-wire for a mile or so. That solves the detour problem and it works really slick.


Trolley is never gonna happen when they cost five times a diesel bus. It'll change when
a) American cities stop wanting gold-plated and just coat-tail on whatever Belgrade or Kiev is buying
b) American companies decide to be competitive in the world trolley-bus market
or
c) Somebody develops a trolley "engine" module that drops into a standard diesel bus and is priced (life cycle cost) competitive to diesels

wait what how --

did that bus just
a) back through two frogs*
and
b) wind up dealing with the model railroad wye problem... at some point, he has to end up with "reverse polarity" on the poles (right pole positive)... I realize that's nothing you can't fix with a bridge rectifier, and surely the Flyers had them... but what about older units?


* conventional wisdom is "backing poles is bad" because if you are going forward and a pole comes off, it largely bounces along under the wire... whereas if you are backing and your pole comes off, your momentum drives it upward into the maze of wires, and this only ends with something breaking. BTDT. This problem is bad on the straight and much worse in special work.

Backing through frogs: Don't forget that trolley busses have swivelling shoes, not fixed ones like most streetcars, so frogs need to have a switch for the poles, either powered for both directions or sprung in one direction regardless whether poles are leading or trailing.

Polarity: Older trolley busses couldn't care less, since series-wound motors run the same direction regardless of polarity. IRM's line is currently single "track" anyway throughout.

Wyes are not ideal but were successfully used, much as they were on many streetcar lines in the old days, e.g. the Muni "M" line in PCC days .

There is however a pedestrian safety issue with backing up any bus, since there is no visibility to the rear. IRM is in the process of replacing the wye with a loop mainly for that reason. The other end already has a loop.

BTW, there is some skill required to back up the articlulated trolley busses on the wye.

Some trolley companies, like Indiana RR and Pittsburgh (Pa.) Rwys., used trolley bus overhead hardware to make back poling of rail cars easier. Double deck open top British trams used swivel shoes and trolley bus overhead hardware to make the pole go the correct way with off center wire.

Regarding San Francisco--they also have their own source of electricity, the Hetch Hetchy hydroelectric plant, which powers the electric buses, the electric streetcars, the LRVs, and the big motors that keep the cable cars moving.

I know you've heard this from me before, but I have doubts about solving the planning sins of the past with a transportation system. Outside of special events, there is not enough transit demand (for lack of a better term) to make a streetcar or trolley bus loop worthwhile for moving a handful of people around the large empty spaces of a railroad museum. Orange Empire uses a historic diesel bus to move tour groups around during special events and a much smaller personnel cart for docent tours during regular weekends.

Making our museum campuses "pedestrian friendly" should be a bigger factor in our (more or less non-existent) museum planning efforts. People will walk a reasonable distance when the walk is pleasant enough and their goal is in sight. People will begrudgingly walk a few hundred feet to get from their car to a shopping mall, and then will walk the length of the mall without thinking about it. People walk for miles at Disneyland and other amusement parks.

Even worse than the auto-oriented space of a parking lot, the railroad landscape exists at an inhuman scale. Most of our museums have been laid out incrementally to organize, store, and sometimes display rail equipment in a reasonably efficient, but not very planned manner. Yard throats and turning radii force the already large equipment on to tracks spread over acres at some of our museums. Alternately, narrow ROWs force preserved equipment to be stored end to end over hundreds of feet.

The result is the creation of an industrial moonscape that often does little for visitor comfort. I am oversimplifying things. Many of our museums have attractively landscaped "park" areas for picnics and outdoor events, but these areas are usually a small portion of the museum not generally a part of the equipment viewing experience.

There are a number of things that could be done to make pedestrians more comfortable at our museums, and even get them to explore specific parts of the campus. These techniques include providing visual stimulation at the human scale, landscaping (more than just plants), street furniture, and ensuring that the not so dark arts of "wayfinding" are employed to ensure that people are oriented to the site and know where they are going. Retail architecture, theme parks, and, well, (non-RR) outdoor museums do all of these things.

Ultimately, the best solution might be to concentrate human-scaled features near the entry, and in an area designed to be pedestrian friendly. In most (non-RR) museums, only a portion is open to the public. The rest of the museum is devoted to storage, conservation, and administration. Furthermore, only a portion of the collection is ever on display. At our museums, the more distant portions of the campus can continue to be open for guided tours and special events, but the heart of the museum should be scaled to handle the visistorship of a more typical weekend. With good design, this can still be a large area.

you're not going to be a museum, you're not going to be a middle of the street streetcar/trolley bus running.

Someone commented about people will walk miles in mall, consider what Chicago is with the EL, the rest standard busses, Taxi's, and cars cars cars.

Your circular route is pretty much set without variations, will you need to move your trolley bus to the curb to pick up passengers? or will they walk to the Trolley car to get on? Milwaukee had safety islands for passengers to get on in the middle of the street.

You're not that compicated in needs, its more an attraction and a convenient getaround. The other issue is handicapped access. Now that gets political.

You would need ramps at standard locations, the car would need door openings to handle that.
I would think PCCs today have Handicap access perhaps even for street level loading. To me for stability-reliability for repeated operations the Trolleycar fits better. The trolleybus was meant to pull over to the curb and still be electric.
You don't need that here.

----edit--

Local mall here had a gimmick steam train IN the mall you could ride. DUH!
Don't do that... be realistic, but fun.

The Anacortes Railway was a wonderful operation. The locomotive and rolling stock were amazing, those tiny cars were some of the finest tourist railway equipment I've ever seen. The whole thing was a work of art, and I'm proud to say I was friends with Tommy Thompson, and still miss him.

That said, Tommy's railway would make a terrible people mover. The coaches were low capacity, took a long time to load and unload, and would not stand up well to heavy use.

Don't take my word for it, ask Disney. Look at the early days of the Disneyland Railroad. The lovely Retlaw coaches, small scale traditonal passenger cars and the coaches that resembled stock cars. They were really cool, but lost capacity due to the aisle space, and worst of all dwell times were long due to everyone having to use the end doors.

There's a reason the use the full width seats open trolley style coaches now. Maximum capacity and fast load / unload cycles. They're not as nice looking, but they work better.