Trolley line

“ Dunton. The Edmondson-avenue trolley line had just been completed up Charles street, and for the first time this old residential section resounded with the clangor that betokened rapid transit. About 9 one night I observed Dr. Dunton stepping down from the pavement of the Athenaeum Club to cross the street. A trolley car was coming rapidly, but the old gentleman, his head bent in thought and unused as he was to modern inventions and modern bursts of speed, paid no attention and moved in front of it. ”

“ They had electric trolley buses (like street cars) running between the camp and town. Going to town one day the bus driver pulled over to the curb to pick up a passenger. Another bus behind us decided to go on past, forgetting that his overhead trolley pole was on the same line as ours, causing the fire to fly from the trolley line, and from our bus driver, also. He called the other bus driver names I had never heard of before. ”

“ Once, like a reassuring presence, a small black car ran down past the trolley, almost brushing my coat.
Twelve minutes of this, then before us were iron sheds and black and white genii—the men who had made the line and the men who worked the trolley. Inside the shed the puffing little engine of magic power. Then the 'man who makes' on the mountain hurried us off, through a forest of thin firs, on to a plain of rock and white sand, with not more than ten feet of view around. ”

“ Perhaps the most thrilling and exciting moment on my various travels was that spent on a trolley-car in Southern Mexico. Along those distant tracks barely two or three trains pass in a day, and hundreds, aye, thousands, of miles of railway have to be kept in repair. It is usual for the engineers to run along the line in a little open wagon, known as a trolley-car, which is worked by hand by four or six men, and covers the ground at a good pace. It can stop at any moment, and be lifted bodily off the line should a train require to pass. ”

“ Enthusiasts say the trolley is only the beginning of electric locomotion, and that there is already in rapid evolution an electric system which will supersede steam even for trunk-line purposes. In vision, it presumes a speed of one hundred and twenty-five miles an hour instead of forty; greater safety, cleanliness, and comfort; and what is most momentous and startling, an economy in construction and operation which will warrant the sacrifice of the billions of dollars now invested in steam-railway properties. ”

“ Apart from these special extended sleepers with wire carriers attached, the line is constructed in the ordinary mariner with rails 14 lb. per yard and upward. As the electric locomotives are lighter than steam locomotives, the weight of rail required is somewhat less. The special trolley for erecting the wires along the railway line is shown in Fig. 3. This consists of an ordinary four wheeled platform wagon with ladder, and wire drum with tightening gear and clamps or grips for anchoring the trolley to the line. ”

“ The hour grows late and the time arrives to return to our train, which is sidetracked for occupancy at the Rio Grande Western depot. Several of our party gather at the corner of Main and Second South Street to await the coming of a trolley car that will convey us to the depot, about two miles away. According to the schedule of the line a car should pass every ten minutes, but to-night must be an exception, for it is forty-five minutes before our car arrives, and several of the party have started to walk. It is near midnight when we reach our train and turn in for the night. ”

“ In rigging the wire only one end should be wrapped fast around a post. The other end should be hitched to a stout rope and pulley-block. Before using the trolley the rope should be hauled as taut as possible and made fast securely. Then there will be a straight tight wire and no sagging.
If enough care is used, there is no reason why a trolley swimming line cannot be set up along a river-bank or the edge of a swimming-pond. In doing this, however, boys should not depend upon their own judgment. It is best by far to engage a competent man to set the posts and rig the wires. ”

“ Equally important are the crossings of trolley lines, in these days of high-speed trains and cars, and quite as many accidents occur at street intersections where two main lines of travel cross, even though there be no trolley lines. ”

“ Before asking our people to give them an overhead trolley system throughout the whole city, the United Railroads would do well to show on some one of their overhead trolley lines now in operation a frequent, efficient and satisfactory service to the public. We do not want for San Francisco an extension and perpetuation of the unsightly, noisy, dangerous, uncomfortable and inefficient system of overhead trolleys as operated by the United Railroads to-day. ”

“ In one of the largest cities of the United States there is a trolley-car line that crosses the tracks of a steam railroad. The usual rail gates guard the crossing when trains are passing, but accidents have happened there in spite of such precautions. ”

“ So congested have even these railroad facilities become that the city cries bitterly all the while for a transit relief and experts have been at work months and years planning a subway to aid both the steam roads and the overworked trolley lines. At best it is no sinecure to operate the trolley cars of Pittsburgh. ”

“ There is the clear mellow clang of the trolley gongs, the musical trill of fast wagon wheels running along the trolley rails, and the rattle of hoofs on the cobbled strip between the metals. Particularly easy to identify is the sound every citizen knows, the rasping, sliding clatter of a wagon turning off the car track so that a trolley can pass it. ”

“ Once safely out of the cable car, however, at the upper terminus, we smile, and think the worst is over. It is true, we see awaiting us another innocent looking electric car by which we are to go still higher; but we are confident that nothing very terrible can be experienced in a trolley. This confidence is quickly shattered. I doubt if there is anything in the world more "hair lifting" than the road over which that car conveys its startled occupants. ”

“ There was a trolley—just such a thing as porters used at railway stations, but smaller—which was his own particular implement, his own to pack parcels on for delivery to such few customers as did not carry away their own purchases: and to acquire the dexterous management of this trolley was a pure joy. ”

“ We ask the thousands of citizens who have been compelled to wait for overhead trolley cars, and to stand up in those overhead vehicles, whether or not the overhead trolley has thus afforded them satisfactory service? If we may judge the future by the experience with the overhead trolley of the past, it means fewer cars (hence less expense to the United Railroads) , overcrowding and discomfort of passengers. The only advantage which thus far has come from the system seems to be to the company itself. ”

“ There were instantly [77] shrieks, groans, and such horrible sounds that we waited for nothing more, but pushing our stakes into the ground, sent the trolley flying past the awful spot and down the next hill. How we didn't turn over and get killed down that incline I don't know—it was the one nearest home, you know, where one has to be so fearfully careful about putting on a brake as a rule. ”

“ Permit me to state most emphatically that this is not intended as an argument in favor of the abolishment of single trolley systems. Our civilization owes more to them than could be rehearsed in catalogue form within the limits of one issue of this magazine. We have nothing at present that can be employed as a satisfactory substitute for the ordinary electric railway. The underground trolley is a safe substitute, but the great expense of installation renders it available for very few localities. ”

“ Stone & Webster’s lines can be found all over the Union, as in Minneapolis and in the state of Washington, as well as in the South. The capital of the trolley roads in 1906 was 3,765 millions, or a fifth of the total trolley investment in the United States.
At the best points of contact between rail and water transportation great port enterprises are springing up. ”

“ But for the present the trolley's strength, like a woman's, is in her weakness. She sings along her delicate wires, overcoming every obstacle, legal, natural, mechanical, temporal, and practical, dodging every expense, and, best of all, gathers in the ready nickels of everybody and his wife, while her laborious sister, the railway, must pose and turn and make rebates and special rates and ransack the catalogue of inducements if haply she may capture the more infrequent quarters and halves and dollars. ”

“ Possibly to the rail way-haters the advent of the trolley has come both as a revelation and an extinguisher! At any rate it has brought them the cheap transportation for which they worried, without the expense of building their own railway coaches, and so a revelation in solving their difficulties with unexpected rapidity. But has it also silenced them? They can not demand that Government seize the railways without seizing the tramways. ”

“ Newton even dreamt of making the trolley, too, in the Main Street, but that would be a very troublesome job; and as for the railway station, it was easy enough to build a shed and a platform, but what is a railway station without a train? ”

“ If they see a horse in anxiety at the approach of the car, they considerately stop, and let him get by with his driver in safety. By such means, with their frequent trips and low fares, and with the ease and comfort of their cars, they have conciliated public favor, and the trolley has drawn travel away from the steam railroad in such measure that it ran no trains last winter.
The trolley, in fact, is a fad of the summer folks this year; but what it will be another no one knows; it may be their hissing and by-word. In the mean time, as I have already suggested, they have other amusements. ”

“ Of course, as Lorraine says, “Stopping, that's art; and what are we artists like, my dear, but those drivers of trolley-cars, in New York, who, by some divine instinct, recognize in the forest of pillars and posts the white-striped columns at which they may pull up? Yes, we're drivers of trolley-cars charged with electric force and prepared to go any distance from which the consideration of a probable smash ahead doesn't deter us.” ”

“ The legal status of the trolley is that of a street railway. To construct the railway (and it may yet become convenient to adopt the English word "tramway," and apply hereafter arbitrarily the two, making the word Railway signify the great lines operated by steam, while the word Tramway signifies all lines operated by other traction systems) , first of all, that slow-moving branch of the common law which we call "eminent domain" must be invoked with all its paraphernalia; and, of all large bodies, this power of the State, this "eminent domain," moves far the slowest. ”

“ The patrol wagon turned into Franklin Street and disappeared in the confusion of vehicles. The street was crowded; enormous trucks clung obstinately to the car tracks and only wrenched themselves away when the clamor of the gongs became desperate, their drivers swearing at the motormen, flinging angry glances at them. The trolley-cars swept by, filled with shop-girls, clerks, working-men, business men hanging to straps, reading evening papers in the brilliant electric lights; men clung to the broad rear platforms ”

“ The trolley indeed has, in less space of time than that required to launch any other known improvement, practically captured the cheap transportation field. This newcomer, indeed, seems equipped with every opportunity that the railways have been coveting for fifty years, and to be getting for the asking everything for which the railways have to pay the heaviest. ”

“ The trolley in front and the Elevated railway behind helped out, too, besides the automobiles, and the newsboys and more or less babies that were trying to do their part. Some people would be lonesome without those things, I suppose. ”

“ The two machines were running almost neck and neck now. The trolley cried, hissed, and spat fire in her mad effort to pass the locomotive. A few stray sparks went out of the engine-stack, and fell upon the roof of the racing car. At intervals of half a minute the fireman opened the furnace door; and by the flare of light from the white-hot fire-box the engine-driver could see the men on the teetering trolley,—the motor-man, the conductor, the sheriff, and his deputy. ”

“ I never saw people standing in a train, except that once which I have already noted, when in a very crowded car in Wales, two women, decent elderly persons, got in and were suffered to remain on foot by the young men who had comfortable places; no one dreamed, apparently, of offering to give up his seat. But, on the other hand, a superior civilization is shown in what I may call the manual forbearance of the trolley and railway folk, who are so apt to nudge and punch you at home here, when they wish your attention. ”

“ The Convent [Pg 28] was in Torresdale on the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the Pennsylvania Depot—Philadelphia had as yet no Stations and Terminals—was in the distant, unknown quarter of Frankford. I believe it is used as a freight station now and I have sometimes thought that, for sentiment's sake, I should like to make a pilgrimage to it over the once well-travelled road. But the modern trolley has deserted the straight course of the unadventurous horse-car of my day and I doubt if ever again I could find my way back. The old horse-car went, without turn or twist, along Third Street. ”

“ By permission of the London County Council
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roadway. Passengers can thus, by about twenty-five steps, go to and from the platforms in a few seconds. The ticket-offices are at the bottom of the stairways. The passenger returns at Park Street (the busiest station) are among the largest in the world, being 28,000,000 per annum.
The Boston surface street cars adopt the overhead trolley principle of electric traction, and the elevated railway-cars the third rail system, both these systems being continued throughout the subway. ”