My layout is planned with North Shore/South Shore/CTA and Chicago railroads plus. I like N&W and Virginian electric (not doing N&W electric). I remember riding the North Shore electroliner as a kid up to Milwaukee and back to Chicago. North Shore was an amazing operation and I will do more its freight operations. I am building the Milwaukee North Shore station and tracks. There is Orr girder rail but I will use the Proto87 track for street running. You could always lay rail sideways against normal rail to represent girder rail using a smaller size rail.
I like the Tillag street trackage. Maybe if more modern light rail cars come out, someone else will also offer modern girder style street trackage set ups. The Tillag stuff is definatly not a well known product when it comes to the track. I knew about the Orr track stuff and I do not have the patience to deal with it or the work to lay in the street surface after the track is done. If I can make the poles work on my layout I have now. I will grass up the right of way to make it look a bit less main line and more like a rural interurban line. I have rode the South Shore years ago. Its a shame the North Shore didn’t surivive, I bet it would be heavily patronized today with all the nice homes up that way with folks needing to commute into downtown. Mike the Aspie
Mike,
Tillig track is well known in Europe, where model railroading is much wider spread as in the US. Regarding the availability of modern traction equipment, I have my doubts whether a US manufacturer or importer will take up the challenge. This will be most likely the domain of kitchen counter businesses offering 3D printed shells to fit over modified drives.
Regarding a working catenary for trolley pole operation - that´s quite a challenge! You need to have some kind of overhead switch at each turnout, which makes “stringing the wire” an awfully fiddly task!
I’ve always had an urge to build a traction layout. I love the work of Bob Hegge and other traction modelers of years past.
I just hope the urge never gets too strong!
That is why only one of the 2 turnouts on my simple layout will have the wire"frog" so I can reverse down into the car barn. About our only hope for USA modern street cars is probably Kato. With them releasing thier Uni Tram street track starter set in a USA version of street markings. Thier Portram’s are not to far off from what we see here in the USA. Its just all in N scale(primary modeling scale in Japan). I have seen some really nice layouts done with their trams. Combined with Kato’s Diotown buildings and lighting, a very convincing modern downtown can be modeled.
Narrow gauge (HOn30) and traction. Scratch built electric boxcab on a Kato N scale powered chassis.
I grew up in Brooklyn the closest I was to streetcars was seeing the paved over tracks in the street.One day while taking a Trailways bus up to Maine the bus got off the highway by the Riverside carbarns in Boston.It was loaded with Orange PCC cars.Been hooked ever since
tge
.
What, Me model a prototype railroad… NEVER! [:(!]
.
I hired a Giant Orc smash all prototype train cars that show up on my pike!
.
.
-Kevin
.
Got my first 5 Suydam trolley poles today, have them installed on the layout, only one is really loose but I have a plan to deal with that. Wire height over the rail will be right around 2.75 inches once I put the hangers on the pole arm. Gonna need about 20 more of these poles to go all the way around the layout. Wish I was around and modeling traction back when one could just order these new from E. Suydam. Unfortunatly, Alpine Scale Models hasn’t seen fit to make more of them since taking over the company. This is an action shot as the car is coming at us going around 30 smph.
Looks nice, Mike - better than the logging theme you had planned for this layout!
Does really suit the layout doesn’t it? A single car carbarn would look good on that siding where that silver boxcar is parked. I am good at soldering, so once I have the supplies, it shouldnt be to hard(other than the backside of the layout) to string the wire. I did sell off my other geared logging engines, but I bought the other 2 F units for my A-B-A CZ power. Really only need the one car for my traction line. Still hope to find the unpowered matching trailer to my power car. Just none up for sale right now. I also still have my Sierra RR power in the form of #38 and #18 for when the steam mood strikes. Mike the Aspie
I have an older Bowser PCC car and a few body kits.Have alot of Orr track and some structures.Just waiting to start a layout hopefully early in the new year.
I am not very familiar with traction. I never lived around trolleys or everseen a real one. I would probably have more to say on the subject if I did.
From what I did see on TV or a movie. I always thought they had a lot of character. The wheels with clickity Clank around the sharp radius curves they could maneuver, and the ding ding of the Bell.
Honestly my most vivid memory of them was in the 70s. It went something like this.
Saute and simmer the flavor can’t be beat Rice-A-Roni the San Francisco treat… You would see the little trolley booting around town with the ding ding of the bell. I always got a kick out of that one.
Regards Track Fiddler
If my memory is not playing tricks on me, that was a cable car and not a trolley.
Ulrich … As info, San Francisco has both cable cars and trolley streetcars.
Correct Ulrich, but close enough as they have been so engrained from those ad’s on TV. Espically to those that never have seen any other kind of traction. Not to mention you can still ride those cable cars
I’m in the same league with Paul.
Growing up in Cleveland, where we still have overhead wire, lightrail, it was always a treat to ride into the Terminal Tower in one of the Shaker Rapid PCCs or the Cleveland Transit System’s St. Louis or Airporter cars.
Of course, I have always been fascinated with the electrified Cleveland Union Terminal heavy electrics that ran from 1930 to 1952 before being sent to Grand Central territory.
My dad would take me to Trolleyville, an operating museum run by a guy named Brookins, that had about a mile of track or to the Worthington, Ohio Railway Museum which also featured some traction.
I rode the South Shore when they still had the big heavy cars, also some of the Chicago Elevated, too. Along with some of the NYC Subway and lots of the Pennsy, New Haven, New York Central and Long Island electrified lines, Toronto and San Francisco, too.
There was a little interurban line that ran to Chardon, Ohio called the Cleveland & Eastern. I can still walk parts of the right-of-way. Track was ripped up in 1921. Once, after a bridge burned down, wire was strung over about a 2 mile stretch of the B&O’s Lake Branch and the cars occupied the same trackage as the B&O traffic.
I wish I would have made provisions for a city electric line on my layout like Garry has. Maybe on the next layout.
IMG_5616_fix by Edmund, on Flickr
Back in the late 1970s one of the Cleveland railroad clubs would charter this Kuhlman center-entrance car for the day. It was dirt cheap then!
Aside from the fiddly work of installing the catenary, one of the major obstacles in modelking urban traction is modeling good looking street track.
For simple straight and curved track, Rail N Scale offers a 3D printed tool, which is basically a roller with an imprinted sett structure. All you have to do is fill the track with modeling clay and roll this tool over it to have a perfect looking track!
Take a look here!
Rail N Scale is a Dutch company.
pretty cool Ulrich! Thats a neat idea for quick street trackage without some of the headache of Orr track. The Tilage set up is probably the best one going for HO scale street traction as it has the points and junctions that make that type of modeling unique and normaly much more difficult with lots of track assembly/soldering. I suspect if I had been exposed to the city scene more as a child, I would be more inclined to model it. But I grew up on the edge of a small city, more rural that city where I grew up. I walked the abandon right of way that ran along side the NKP IMC district. Saw the old concrete bridge supports, even a few ties and ballest remain in one area. So the thought of the quiet of the summer country side, interrupted by the ding of the gong bell and the noise of electric traction motors as the car makes a stop, then returning to the quiet sounds as the car departs is what brings a smile to my face. While only in my imagination, I am much to young to have seen it first hand, its fun to dream what it was like. The sounds come from memories riding the old North Shore coach that used to run at that museum in Noblesville. Its really a crying shame these lines didn’t survive into todays world. Talk about clean transportation, much less polution and many lines were quite fast once out in the countryside. Very little noise to annoy people as the car went by. Anybody got someone that can paint brass interurbans? Need to get mine painted and I want it done really nicely. Mike the Aspie
Streetcars are still going strong in most cities in Germany. After a period of neglect and closures in the 1970s, city planners have re-discovered the benefits of rail transport in the 1980s, which saw big investments flowing into the modernization of the remaining networks. Certainly one of the best networks worldwide can be found in and around the city of Karlsruhe, were streetcars have taken the role of interurbans, changing into streetcars once the city limits are reached, only to turn into a real railroad when leaving town again. A little further north, you can travel by streetcar through the entire Ruhr area, Germany´s most populated region with more than 17 million folks living in the metropolitan regio, with just one ticket! Sadly, my hometown Hamburg closed the last streetcar line in 1978, but has been making plans to revive it since the early 1990s. I don´t think I will that see in my lifetime!
Inspite of the majority of people in my country being in daily touch with streetcars, traction modeling is a small niche. There are a few manstream manufacturers offering traction models, but the brunt is made by small business, running limited editions, some of them beyond belief when it comes to pricing!