I personaly love overhead trolleywires and the poles can have a victorian decor and gas lamps…But why do some NIMBYS hate trolleybuses or light rail because of the wires…Like these same people did not say anyting about cable TV!
Oops doulbe post…
You can still remove the other one as long as nobody has posted to it.
No, they’re not ugly, actually they are kind of cool looking, especially the webbing on curves.
Yea there OK. But I really get turned on by those 500KV lines strung across the desert. Especially when there are 2 or 3 side by side.[:P]
Yes.
…I doubt if they won any beauty contests…but were necessary in the hey days of street cars and interurbans, etc…Seems the trend is to eliminate wires of all kinds on poles now in populated areas in towns and cities…I don’t know what the answer is for new construction…perhaps they can be done more discreetly now in installation…I"m not against these systems at all…
Terminaltower, It would be a noble gesture on your part if you deleted the duplicate post.
Some systems handle them artisticlly, like Grenoble, France, Blackpool, England, and Canal Street, New Orleans. But Buffalo’s Main Street looks like the catenary is there for GG-1’s or Acela or the DB High Speed Train, and the poles supporting this complexity look like they are there to support an elevated railway with heavy cars.
Cleveland still objects to a trolleybus system because the wires would cause visual polution. The Building of the Euclid Busway had trolleybuses proposed for the route. Which is odd since the bordedup buildings and vacante lots caus e more polution
Sorta…Yes
Why not electrical pickup from between the tracks?
I guess it may be cheaper.
One thing 4 sure…there are not that many still operating.
I really don’t like electrics a lot.
they tried it already, had a nasty habit of electricuting pedestrians and horsecarts in wet or icy weather[:0]
…Yes, can’t see how you could use {safely}, electrical pickups between tracks…It would require for them to be slightly below grade {so automobiles could drive over the same locations…and of course water and that kind of electricity would not mix well…especially also mixing humans into the plot as well…I don’t subscribe that there are just a few left in the world…Probably quite a few installations around this old globe still in use along with some new ones…
It’s all in the eye of the beholder and what your priorities are. Case in point, I was travelling in Montana a few years ago, and overheard this conversation on the Empire Builder:
Pasenger 1to rancher: Doesn’t that ugly oil pump in front of your house bother you?
Rancher: Nope, every time it goes up and down I get $1,000. It’s a thing of beauty.
Actual story.
You should get your eyes tested and then have a look at the new Bordeaux trams. They have 11km (8ish miles) of ground level current collection on the city centre. The system simply detects where the tram is and switches the power on underneath the tram. It’s very nice and seems to be quite reliable so far, but it is still new.
Some blurb;
http://lrta.info/DDocs/dd011.html
Some piccys;
http://www.railfaneurope.net/pix/fr/trams/Bordeaux/pix.html
Speaking of eye of the beholder, I commented to someone after a trip to Buffalo that I thought the poles on their light rail looked nice. He complained, just as daveklepper pointed out, that it’s extra heavy construction for what it’s used for.
I can see his point, but remember the context, it’s in the middle of a city’s main street, not white picket fences and rose bushes.
For contrast, look at Septa’s rt 101 and 102. They go through lots of folks back yards, they have substantial poles with span wire and big beams going across the tracks. The span wire is attached to the trolley wire. The big beams don’t seem to be attached to anything, and don’t seem to be holding anything up.
I was sort of dissappointed to see the rail and all the associated overhead infrastructure dismantled and removed in San Antonio. Once the Pearl brewery shut down, there was no use for the stuff anymore. The removal of the track from the street sure makes for a smoother ride though.
Hugh…Thanks for the “nice remark”…You would do well to sharpen your pencil too…Believe 11km equals just a bit more than 6.7 miles…
I’ll add my vote for “eye of the beholder.” We railfans revel in all things rail (some like certain things more than others, but that’s another story). I think NIMBY sums it up very well. Some of the folks who would do away with catenary due to visual pollution probably also want to get rid of the busses (and cars - except for theirs), due to air pollution. Then they can’t figure out why people can’t seem to get anywhere…
I seem to remember an early streetcar (tram) system in Paris (not Arkansas, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Ontario, South Carolina, Tennessee or Texas-the other one, in France-LOL) used an experimental collection system (500V) of buttons installed in the pavement with a long collector shoe (or shoes) under the cars to make contact; the buttons being spaced far enough apart that no pedestrian could accidentally make contact with both positive & negative and thereby be electrocuted. My recollection is vague as to the details (the system was just mentioned in passing and I can’t lay my hands on which book it was in just now) but the downfall of the experiment was that, although the buttons were spaced far enough apart that people coudn’t make contact…horses still could.
Ouch!
You can also use a conduit pickup - the cars have a pickup shoe hanging underneath which fits into a slot between the rails and contacts a pair of power conductors. This was used in London and a few US cities. Stud contacts were tried but had one risk - they relied on a mechanism to disconnect the power from the stud after the car passed over it, however, this didn’t always work reliably. Interestingly some systems still use it. I was in Caen (France) last year, their new guided bus system (won’t call it a tram - no rails!) uses stud pickup so the problems must have been solved.
You can find more information on London’s conduit system here: http://dewi.ca/trains/conduit/index.html - there are photos of new conduit track under construction which may be of interest.