A tram (also known as a tramcar, or a streetcar or trolley in Canada and the United States) is an urban rail transit type in which vehicles, whether individual railcars or multiple-unit trains, run on tramway tracks laid on public streets, although some trams run on sections of track in their own segregated right-of-way.
Trams are a type of light rail and are included within this broader category. However, they differ from it in their frequent integration into urban streets, lower traffic signal priority, coexistence with other vehicles, and lower capacity. Their units are capable of forming motor coaches or motorcars, which allows for the operation of longer trains.
Trams are usually lighter and shorter than main line and rapid transit trains. Most trams use electrical power, usually fed by a pantograph sliding on an overhead line; older systems may use a trolley pole or a bow collector. In some cases, a contact shoe on a third rail is used. If necessary, they may have dual power systems—electricity in city streets and diesel in more rural environments. Occasionally, trams also carry freight. Tramlines or tram networks operated as public transport are called tramways, streetcars or simply trams, including systems separated from other traffic. Some trams, known as tram-trains, may have segments that run on mainline railway tracks, similar to interurban systems. The differences between these modes of rail transport are often indistinct, and systems may combine multiple features.
One of the advantages over earlier forms of transit was the low rolling resistance of metal wheels on steel rails, allowing the trams to haul a greater load for a given effort. Another factor which contributed to the rise of trams was the high total cost of ownership of horses. Electric trams largely replaced animal power in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Improvements in other vehicles such as buses led to the decline of trams in the early to mid 20th century. However, trams have seen a resurgence since the 1980s.
Etymology and terminology
The English terms tram and tramway are derived from the Scots word tram, referring respectively to a type of truck (goods wagon or freight railroad car) used in coal mines and the tracks on which they ran. The word tram probably derived from Middle Flemish trame ("beam, handle of a barrow, bar, rung"). The identical word trame with the meaning "crossbeam" is also used in the French language. Etymologists believe that the word tram refers to the wooden beams the railway tracks were initially made of before the railroad pioneers switched to the much more wear-resistant tracks made of iron and, later, steel. The word tram-car is attested from 1873.
Alternatives
Although the words tram and tramway have been adopted by many languages, they are not used universally in English; North Americans prefer streetcar, trolley, or trolleycar. The term streetcar is first recorded in 1840, and originally referred to horsecars.
The terms streetcar and trolley are often used interchangeably in the United States, with trolley being the preferred term in the eastern US and streetcar in the western US. Streetcar is preferred in English Canada, while tramway is preferred in Quebec. In parts of the United States, internally powered buses made to resemble a streetcar are often referred to as "trolleys". To avoid further confusion with trolley buses, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) refers to them as "trolley-replica buses". In the United States, the term tram has sometimes been used for rubber-tired trackless trains, which are unrelated to other kinds of trams.
A widely held belief holds the word trolley to derive from the troller (said to derive from the words traveler and roller), a four-wheeled device that was dragged along dual overhead wires by a cable that connected the troller to the top of the car and collected electrical power from the overhead wires; this portmanteau derivation is, however, most likely folk etymology. "Trolley" and variants refer to the verb troll, meaning "roll" and probably derived from Old French, and cognate uses of the word were well established for handcarts and horse drayage, as well as for nautical uses.
The alternative North American term 'trolley' may strictly speaking be considered incorrect, as the term can also be applied to cable cars, or conduit cars that instead draw power from an underground supply. Conventional diesel tourist buses decorated to look like streetcars are sometimes called trolleys in the US (tourist trolley). Furthering confusion, the term tram has instead been applied to open-sided, low-speed segmented vehicles on rubber tires generally used to ferry tourists short distances, for example on the Universal Studios backlot tour and, in many countries, as tourist transport to major destinations. The term may also apply to an aerial ropeway, e.g. the Roosevelt Island Tramway.
Trolleybus
Although the use of the term trolley for tram was not adopted in Europe, the term was later associated with the trolleybus, a rubber-tired vehicle running on hard pavement, which draws its power from pairs of overhead wires. These electric buses, which use twin trolley poles, are also called trackless trolleys (particularly in the northeastern US), or sometimes simply trolleys (in the UK, as well as the Pacific Northwest, including Seattle, and Vancouver).
History
Creation
The history of passenger trams, streetcars and trolley systems, began in the early nineteenth century. It can be divided into several distinct periods defined by the principal means of power used. Precursors to the tramway included the wooden or stone wagonways that were used in central Europe to transport mine carts with unflanged wheels since the 1500s, and the paved limestone trackways designed by the Romans for heavy horse and ox-drawn transportation. By the 1700s, paved plateways with cast iron rails were introduced in England for transporting coal, stone or iron ore from the mines to the urban factories and docks.
Horse-drawn
The world's first passenger train or tram was the Swansea and Mumbles Railway, in Wales, UK. The British Parliament passed the Mumbles Railway Act in 1804, and horse-drawn service started in 1807. The service closed in 1827, but was restarted in 1860, again using horses. It was worked by steam from 1877, and then, from 1929, by very large (106-seat) electric tramcars, until closure in 1960. The Swansea and Mumbles Railway was something of a one-off however, and no street tramway appeared in Britain until 1860 when one was built in Birkenhead by the American George Francis Train.
Street railways developed in America before Europe, due to the poor paving of the streets in American cities which made them unsuitable for horse-drawn omnibuses, which were then common on the well-paved streets of European cities. Running the horsecars on rails allowed for a much smoother ride. There are records of a street railway running in Baltimore as early as 1828, however the first authenticated streetcar in America, was the New York and Harlem Railroad developed by the Irish coach builder John Stephenson, in New York City which began service in the year 1832. The New York and Harlem Railroad's Fourth Avenue Line ran along the Bowery and Fourth Avenue in New York City. It was followed in 1835 by the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad in New Orleans, Louisiana, which still operates as the St. Charles Streetcar Line. Other American cities did not follow until the 1850s, after which the "animal railway" became an increasingly common feature in the larger towns.
The first permanent tram line in continental Europe was opened in Paris in 1855 by Alphonse Loubat who had previously worked on American streetcar lines. The tram was developed in numerous cities of Europe (some of the most extensive systems were found in Berlin, Budapest, Birmingham, Saint Petersburg, Lisbon, London, Manchester, Paris, Kyiv).
The first tram in South America opened in 1858 in Santiago, Chile. The first trams in Australia opened in 1860 in Sydney. Africa's first tram service started in Alexandria on 8 January 1863. The first trams in Asia opened in 1869 in Batavia (Jakarta), Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia).
Limitations of horsecars included the fact that any given animal could only work so many hours on a given day, had to be housed, groomed, fed and cared for day in and day out, and produced prodigious amounts of manure, which the streetcar company was charged with storing and then disposing. Since a typical horse pulled a streetcar for about a dozen miles a day and worked for four or five hours, many systems needed ten or more horses in stable for each horsecar. In 1905 the British newspaper Newcastle Daily Chronicle reported that, "A large number of London's discarded horse tramcars have been sent to Lincolnshire where they are used as sleeping rooms for potato pickers".
Horses continued to be used for light shunting well into the 20th century, and many large metropolitan lines lasted into the early 20th century. New York City had a regular horsecar service on the Bleecker Street Line until its closure in 1917. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had its Sarah Street line drawn by horses until 1923. The last regular mule-drawn cars in the US ran in Sulphur Rock, Arkansas, until 1926 and were commemorated by a U.S. postage stamp issued in 1983. The last mule tram service in Mexico City ended in 1932, and a mule tram in Celaya, Mexico, survived until 1954. The last horse-drawn tram to be withdrawn from public service in the UK took passengers from Fintona railway station to Fintona Junction one mile away on the main Omagh to Enniskillen railway in Northern Ireland. The tram made its last journey on 30 September 1957 when the Omagh to Enniskillen line closed. The "van" is preserved at the Ulster Transport Museum.
Horse-drawn trams still operate on the 1876-built Douglas Bay Horse Tramway on the Isle of Man, and at the 1894-built horse tram at Victor Harbor in South Australia. New horse-drawn systems have been established at the Hokkaido Museum in Japan and also in Disneyland. A horse-tram route in Polish gmina Mrozy, first built in 1902, was reopened in 2012.
Steam
The first mechanical trams were powered by steam. Generally, there were two types of steam tram. The first and most common had a small steam locomotive at the head of a line of one or more carriages, similar to a small train. Systems with such steam trams included Christchurch, New Zealand; Sydney, Australia; other city systems in New South Wales; Munich, Germany (from August 1883 on), British India (from 1885) and the Dublin & Blessington Steam Tramway (from 1888) in Ireland. Steam tramways also were used on the suburban tramway lines around Milan and Padua; the last Gamba de Legn ("Peg-Leg") tramway ran on the Milan-Magenta-Castano Primo route in late 1957.
The other style of steam tram had the steam engine in the body of the tram, referred to as a tram engine (UK) or steam dummy (US). The most notable system to adopt such trams was in Paris. French-designed steam trams also operated in Rockhampton, in the Australian state of Queensland between 1909 and 1939. Stockholm, Sweden, had a steam tram line at the island of Södermalm between 1887 and 1901.
Tram engines usually had modifications to make them suitable for street running in residential areas. The wheels, and other moving parts of the machinery, were usually enclosed for safety reasons and to make the engines quieter. Measures were often taken to prevent the engines from emitting visible smoke or steam. Usually the engines used coke rather than coal as fuel to avoid emitting smoke; condensers or superheating were used to avoid emitting visible steam. A major drawback of this style of tram was the limited space for the engine, so that these trams were usually underpowered. Steam trams faded out around the 1890s to 1900s, being replaced by electric trams.
Cable-hauled
Another motive system for trams was the cable car, which was pulled along a fixed track by a moving steel cable, the cable usually running in a slot below the street level. The power to move the cable was normally provided at a "powerhouse" site a distance away from the actual vehicle. The London and Blackwall Railway, which opened for passengers in east London, England, in 1840 used such a system.
The first practical cable car line was tested in San Francisco, in 1873. Part of its success is attributed to the development of an effective and reliable cable grip mechanism, to grab and release the moving cable without damage. The second city to operate cable trams was Dunedin, from 1881 to 1957.
The most extensive cable system in the US was built in Chicago in stages between 1859 and 1892. New York City developed multiple cable car lines, that operated from 1883 to 1909. Los Angeles also had several cable car lines, including the Second Street Cable Railroad, which operated from 1885 to 1889, and the Temple Street Cable Railway, which operated from 1886 to 1898.
From 1885 to 1940, the city of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia operated one of the largest cable systems in the world, at its peak running 592 trams on 75 kilometres (47 mi) of track. There were also two isolated cable lines in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; the North Sydney line from 1886 to 1900, and the King Street line from 1892 to 1905.
In Dresden, Germany, in 1901 an elevated suspended cable car following the Eugen Langen one-railed floating tram system started operating. Cable cars operated on Highgate Hill in North London and Kennington to Brixton Hill in South London. They also worked around "Upper Douglas" in the Isle of Man from 1897 to 1929 (cable car 72/73 is the sole survivor of the fleet).
In Italy, in Trieste, the Trieste–Opicina tramway was opened in 1902, with the steepest section of the route being negotiated with the help of a funicular and its cables.
Cable cars suffered from high infrastructure costs, since an expensive system of cables, pulleys, stationary engines and lengthy underground vault structures beneath the rails had to be provided. They also required physical strength and skill to operate, and alert operators to avoid obstructions and other cable cars. The cable had to be disconnected ("dropped") at designated locations to allow the cars to coast by inertia, for example when crossing another cable line. The cable then had to be "picked up" to resume progress, the whole operation requiring precise timing to avoid damage to the cable and the grip mechanism. Breaks and frays in the cable, which occurred frequently, required the complete cessation of services over a cable route while the cable was repaired. Due to overall wear, the entire length of cable (typically several kilometres) had to be replaced on a regular schedule. After the development of reliable electrically powered trams, the costly high-maintenance cable car systems were rapidly replaced in most locations.
Cable cars remained especially effective in hilly cities, since their nondriven wheels did not lose traction as they climbed or descended a steep hill. The moving cable pulled the car up the hill at a steady pace, unlike a low-powered steam or horse-drawn car. Cable cars do have wheel brakes and track brakes, but the cable also helps restrain the car to going downhill at a constant speed. Performance in steep terrain partially explains the survival of cable cars in San Francisco.
The San Francisco cable cars, though significantly reduced in number, continue to provide regular transportation service, in addition to being a well-known tourist attraction. A single cable line also survives in Wellington (rebuilt in 1979 as a funicular but still called the "Wellington Cable Car"). Another system, with two separate cable lines and a shared power station in the middle, operates from the Welsh town of Llandudno up to the top of the Great Orme hill in North Wales, UK.
Internal combustion
Hastings and some other tramways, for example Stockholms Spårvägar in Sweden and some lines in Karachi, used petrol trams. Galveston Island Trolley in Texas operated diesel trams due to the city's hurricane-prone location, which would have resulted in frequent damage to an electrical supply system. Although Portland, Victoria promotes its tourist tram as being a cable car it actually operates using a diesel engine. The tram, which runs on a circular route around the town of Portland, uses dummies and salons formerly used on the Melbourne cable tramway system and since restored.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries a number of systems in various parts of the world employed trams powered by gas, naphtha gas or coal gas in particular. Gas trams are known to have operated between Alphington and Clifton Hill in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia (1886–1888); in Berlin and Dresden, Germany; in Estonia (1921–1951); between Hirschberg and Hermsdorf, Germany, from 1897 (now Jelenia Góra, Cieplice, and Sobieszów in Poland); and in the UK at Lytham St Annes, Trafford Park, Manchester (1897–1908) and Neath, Wales (1896–1920).
Comparatively little has been published about gas trams. However, research on the subject was carried out for an article in the October 2011 edition of "The Times", the historical journal of the Australian Association of Timetable Collectors, later renamed the Australian Timetable Association.
Electric
The world's first electric tram line operated in Sestroretsk near Saint Petersburg invented and tested by inventor Fyodor Pirotsky in 1875. Later, using a similar technology, Pirotsky put into service the first public electric tramway in St. Petersburg, which operated only during September 1880.
The second demonstration tramway was presented by Siemens & Halske at the 1879 Berlin Industrial Exposition.
The first public electric tramway used for permanent service was the Gross-Lichterfelde tramway in Lichterfelde near Berlin in Germany, which opened in 1881. It was built by Werner von Siemens who contacted Pirotsky. This was the world's first commercially successful electric tram. It drew current from the rails at first, with overhead wire being installed in 1883.
In Britain, Volk's Electric Railway was opened in 1883 in Brighton. This two kilometer line along the seafront, re-gauged to 2 ft 8+1⁄2 in (825 mm) in 1884, remains in service as the oldest operating electric tramway in the world. Also in 1883, Mödling and Hinterbrühl Tram was opened near Vienna in Austria. It was the first tram in the world in regular service that was run with electricity served by an overhead line with pantograph current collectors. The Blackpool Tramway was opened in Blackpool, UK on 29 September 1885 using conduit collection along Blackpool Promenade. This system is still in operation in modernised form.
The earliest tram system in Canada was built by John Joseph Wright, brother of the famous mining entrepreneur Whitaker Wright, in Toronto in 1883, introducing electric trams in 1892. In the US, multiple experimental electric trams were exhibited at the 1884 World Cotton Centennial World's Fair in New Orleans, Louisiana, but they were not deemed good enough to replace the Lamm fireless engines then propelling the St. Charles Streetcar Line in that city. The first commercial installation of an electric streetcar in the United States was built in 1884 in Cleveland, Ohio, and operated for a period of one year by the East Cleveland Street Railway Company. The first city-wide electric streetcar system was implemented in 1886 in Montgomery, Alabama, by the Capital City Street Railway Company, and ran for 50 years.
In 1888, the Richmond Union Passenger Railway began to operate trams in Richmond, Virginia, that Frank J. Sprague had built. Sprague later developed multiple unit control, first demonstrated in Chicago in 1897, allowing multiple cars to be coupled together and operated by a single motorman. This gave rise to the modern subway train. Following the improvement of an overhead "trolley" system on streetcars for collecting electricity from overhead wires by Sprague, electric tram systems were rapidly adopted across the world.
Earlier electric trains proved difficult or unreliable and experienced limited success until the second half of the 1880s, when new types of current collectors were developed. Siemens' line, for example, provided power through a live rail and a return rail, like a model train, limiting the voltage that could be used, and delivering electric shocks to people and animals crossing the tracks. Siemens later designed his own version of overhead current collection, called the bow collector. One of the first systems to use it was in Thorold, Ontario, opened in 1887, and it was considered quite successful. While this line proved quite versatile as one of the earliest fully functional electric streetcar installations, it required horse-drawn support while climbing the Niagara Escarpment and for two months of the winter when hydroelectricity was not available. It continued in service in its original form into the 1950s.
Sidney Howe Short designed and produced the first electric motor that operated a streetcar without gears. The motor had its armature direct-connected to the streetcar's axle for the driving force. Short pioneered "use of a conduit system of concealed feed" thereby eliminating the necessity of overhead wire and a trolley pole for street cars and railways. While at the University of Denver he conducted experiments which established that multiple unit powered cars were a better way to operate trains and trolleys.
Electric tramways spread to many European cities in the 1890s, such as:
Prague, Bohemia (then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire), in 1891;
Kyiv, Ukraine, in 1892;
Dresden, Germany; Lyon, France; and Milan and Genoa, Italy, Douglas, Isle of Man in 1893;
Rome, Italy: Plauen, Germany; Bucharest, Romania; Lviv, Ukraine; Belgrade, Serbia in 1894;
Bristol, United Kingdom; and Munich, Germany in 1895;
Bilbao, Spain, in 1896;
Copenhagen, Denmark; and Vienna, Austria, in 1897;
Florence and Turin, Italy, in 1898;