BUSES, TROLLEYS & TRAMS HBDJ (DUNBAR) LONDON NY EUROPE COMMONWEALTH WW1

HARDBOUND BOOK with DUSTJACKET by CHARLES S. DUNBAR (1967)

QUICKER THAN WALKING (EARLY CARRIERS, HACKNEYS, MAIL-COACHES, OMNIBUSES IN FRANCE, SHILLIBEER IN LONDON, EARLY TRAMWAYS AND RAILWAYS, STEAM ROAD COACHES, THE NEW YORK AND HARLEM RAILROAD, THE LONDON ASSOCIATIONS)

THE HORSE SUPREME (THE EXHIBITION OF 1851, LA COMPAGNIE GENERALE DES OMNIBUS, THE LONDON GENERAL, LE CHEMIN DE FER AMERICAIN, RAILWAY OMNIBUSES IN LIVERPOOL, GEORGE FRANCIS TRAINS, TRAMWAYS, THE LANDPORT AND SOUTHSEA TRAMWAY, CONTINENTAL EUROPE, FIRST TRAMS IN LONDON, COMPETITION AMONG BUS OWNERS)

MECHANICAL MARVELS (STEAM TRAMS, MUNICIPAL OPERATIONS, EUROPEAN LIGHT RAILWAYS, COMPRESSED-AIR CARS, CABLE TRACTION, INTERNAL COMBUSTION, ELECTRICITY, BOSTON STREETCAR TUNNELS, OVERHEAD COLLECTION, THE STUD SYSTEM, CONDUIT TRAMWAYS, STEAM-ELECTRIC, PETROL BUSES)

END OF AN ERA (THE ELECTRIC TRACTION MANIA, AMERICAN INTERURBANS, MUNICIPAL ARGUMENTS IN BRITAIN, PLANNING IN VIENNA, HAPHAZARD DEVELOPMENT IN PARIS, THOMAS TILLING MOTORBUSES, COUNTRY BUSES, THE COMBINE, ARTICULATED CARS IN THE US, THE 1914-1918 WAR, JITNEYS IN LOS ANGELES)

THE ROARING TWENTIES (CONSERVATISM IN LONDON, THE INDEPENDENTS, L.C.C. CHEAP FARES, THE FELTHAM TRAMS, COMPETITION IN THE PROVINCES, GROWTH OF THE BIG GROUPS, THE “SHARRA”, FIRST TROLLEY-BUSES, TRAMWAY REPLACEMENTS, THE S.T.C.R.P, THE B.V.G., AMERICAN RURAL BUSES, TRANSCONTINENTAL LINES)

THE TROUBLED THIRTIES (DECLINE OF THE INTERURBANS, THE P.C.C. CAR, DEVELOPMENT OF DIESEL ENGINES, LEGISLATIVE CONTROL IN BRITAIN, THE “LOW-BRIDGE” BUS, TRAM MODERNIZATION SCHEMES, THE LONDON PASSENGER TRANSPORT BOARD, TROLLEY-BUSES IN LONDON, END OF THE PARIS TRAMS)

WAR – AND NO PEACE (THE BLITZ, FUEL SHORTAGES, UTILITY MODELS, THE LAST LONDON TRAM, RECESSION IN TRAFFIC, PARIS DEPENDENT ON METRO, VEHICLE LOOTING, NEW TRAMS IN EUROPE, END OF THE AMERICAN INTERURBANS, DECLINE OF THE STREET RAILWAYS, TORONTO SUBWAY, TRAMS FOR BUSES IN MELBOURNE)

FIGHTING FOR LIFE (INROADS OF THE PRIVATE CAR, BANEFUL EFFECT OF POLITICS, PROBLEMS IN GLASGOW SCOTLAND, BRITISH TRAMS AND TROLLEYBUSES ON THE WANE, MOTORBUS DIMENSIONS INCREASED, BUSES WITHOUT CONDUCTORS, SINGLE OR DOUBLE-DECK?; TRAM TUNNELS, ARTICULATION, NORTH AMERICAN SYSTEMS HARD HIT)

THE FUTURE AND THE PAST (SUBSIDIES, SELF-GUIDED BUS-TRAINS, MONORAILS, HOVERCRAFT, TRAM & TROLLEY MUSEUMS)

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Additional Information from Internet Encyclopedia

The world's first passenger tram was the Swansea and Mumbles Railway, in Wales, UK. The Mumbles Railway Act was passed by the British Parliament in 1804, and this first horse-drawn passenger tramway started operating in 1807. It was worked by steam from 1877, and then, from 1929, by very large (106-seater) electric tramcars, until closure in 1961.

In 1860, Birkenhead on the Wirral Peninsula had become the first town in Europe to operate a street tramway. It was started by George Francis Train, an American when he laid track from Woodside Ferry to Birkenhead Park Main Entrance and ran a horse drawn car service. On 4 February 1901, the Corporation of Birkenhead owned Birkenhead Corporation Tramways commenced operating, first to New Ferry and later around the town. It closed on 17 July 1937.

The first streetcar in America, developed by John Stephenson, began service in the year 1832. This was the New York and Harlem Railroad's Fourth Avenue Line which ran along the Bowery and Fourth Avenue in New York City. These trams were an animal railway, usually using horses and sometimes mules to haul the cars, usually two as a team. Rarely, other animals were tried, including humans in emergency circumstances. It was followed in 1835 by New Orleans, Louisiana, which is the oldest continuously operating street railway system in the world, according to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

The first tram in Continental Europe opened in France in 1839 between Montbrison and Montrond, on the streets inside the towns, and on the roadside outside town. It had permission for steam traction but was entirely run with horse traction. In 1848, it was closed down after repeated economic failure. The tram developed in numerous cities of Europe (some of the most extensive systems were found in Berlin, Budapest, Birmingham, Leningrad, Lisbon, London, Manchester, Paris).

The first tram in South America opened in 10 June 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 (now Jakarta), Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia).

Problems with 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 of. 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.

Horsecars were largely replaced by electric-powered trams following the improvement of an overhead trolley system on trams for collecting electricity from overhead wires by Frank J. Sprague. His spring-loaded trolley pole used a wheel to travel along the wire. In late 1887 and early 1888, using his trolley system, Sprague installed the first successful large electric street railway system in Richmond, Virginia. Within a year, the economy of electric power had replaced more costly horsecars in many cities. By 1889, 110 electric railways incorporating Sprague's equipment had been begun or planned on several continents.

Horses continued to be used for light shunting well into the 20th century. Many large metropolitan lines lasted well into the early twentieth century. New York City had a regular horsecar service on the Bleecker Street Line until its closure in 1917.[5] Pittsburgh, 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.[6] The last mule tram service in Mexico City ended in 1932, and a mule tram in Celaya, Mexico, survived until 1954.[7] 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 now lies at the Ulster Folk and 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 Victor Harbor Horse Drawn Tram, in Adelaide, South Australia. New horse-drawn systems have been established at the Hokkaidō Museum in Japan and also in Disneyland.

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 (called a tram engine in the UK) 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; Adelaide, South Australia; Sydney, Australia and other city systems in New South Wales; Munich, Germany (from August 1883 on),[8] British India (Pakistan) (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 1958.

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 the tram was the limited space for the engine so that these trams were usually underpowered. Steam tram engines faded out around the 1890s to the 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 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 in New Zealand, from 1881 to 1957.

The most extensive cable system in the US was built in Chicago between 1882 and 1906.New York City developed at least seven cable car lines. 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, though during its heyday, Sydney's network was larger,[11] with about 1,600 cars in service at any one time at its peak during the 1930s (cf. about 500 trams in Melbourne today). There were also two isolated cable lines in Sydney, the North Sydney line from 1886 to 1900,[12] and the King Street line from 1892 to 1905. Sydney's tram network ceased to serve the city population by the 1960s, with all tracks being removed, in lieu of a bus service. Melbourne's tram network, however, continues to run to this day.

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).

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 would then have 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) would have 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 would not lose traction as they climbed or descended a steep hill. The moving cable would physically pull 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 perform a regular transportation function, in addition to being a well-known tourist attraction. A single cable line also survives in Wellington, New Zealand (rebuilt in 1979 as a funicular but still called the Wellington Cable Car). Another system, actually two separate cable lines with 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.

Gas

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; between Jelenia Góra, Cieplice, and Sobieszów in Poland (from 1897); and in the UK at Lytham St Annes, Neath (1896–1920), and Trafford Park, Manchester (1897–1908).

On 29 December 1886 the Melbourne newspaper The Argus reprinted a report from the San Francisco Bulletin that Mr Noble had demonstrated a new 'motor car' for tramways 'with success'. The tramcar 'exactly similar in size, shape, and capacity to a cable grip car' had the 'motive power' of gas 'with which the reservoir is to be charged once a day at power stations by means of a rubber hose'. The car also carried an electricity generator for 'lighting up the tram and also for driving the engine on steep grades and effecting a start'.

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, now the Australian Timetable Association.

A tram system powered by compressed natural gas was due to open in Malaysia in 2012,[18] but the news about the project appears to have dried up.

Electric

The world's first experimental electric tramway was built by Ukrainian inventor Fedir Pirotsky near St Petersburg, Russian Empire, in 1875. The first commercially successful electric tram line operated in Lichterfelde near Berlin, Germany, in 1881. It was built by Werner von Siemens (see Berlin Straßenbahn). It initially drew current from the rails, with the overhead wire being installed in 1883.

In Britain, the Volk's Electric Railway was opened in 1883 in Brighton. This two kilometer line, re-gauged to 2 feet 9 inches (840 mm) in 1884, remains in service to this day, and is 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, England on 29 September 1885 using conduit collection along Blackpool Promenade. This system is still in operation in a modernised form.

The earliest tram system in Canada was by John Joseph Wright, brother of the famous mining entrepreneur Whitaker Wright, in Toronto in 1883. In the US, multiple functioning 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 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.[20] Trams were operated in Richmond, Virginia, in 1888, on the Richmond Union Passenger Railway built by Frank J. Sprague. 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 birth to the modern subway train. Following the improvement of an overhead trolley system on streetcars for collecting electricity from overhead wires by Frank J. Sprague, electric tram systems were rapidly adopted across the world.

Earlier installations proved difficult or unreliable. 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 providing electric shocks to people and animals crossing the tracks.[21] Siemens later designed his own version of overhead current collection, called the bow collector, and Thorold, Ontario, opened in 1887, and was considered quite successful at the time. 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, trolley poles and a trolley for street cars and railways. While at the University of Denver he conducted important experiments which established that multiple unit powered cars were a better way to operate trains and trolleys.

Sarajevo built a citywide system of electric trams in 1885. Budapest established its tramway system in 1887, and its ring line has grown to be the busiest tram line in Europe, with a tram running every 60 seconds at rush hour. Bucharest and Belgrade ran a regular service from 1894. Ljubljana introduced its tram system in 1901 – it closed in 1958.

The first electric tramway in Australia was a Sprague system demonstrated at the 1888 Melbourne Centennial Exhibition in Melbourne; afterwards, this was installed as a commercial venture operating between the outer Melbourne suburbs of Box Hill and Doncaster from 1889 to 1896.[33] As well, electric systems were built in Adelaide, Ballarat, Bendigo, Brisbane, Fremantle, Geelong, Hobart, Kalgoorlie, Launceston, Leonora, Newcastle, Perth and Sydney. By the 1970s, the only tramway system remaining in Australia was the Melbourne tram system other than a few single lines remaining elsewhere: the Glenelg tram line, connecting Adelaide to the beachside suburb of Glenelg, and tourist trams in the Victorian Goldfields cities of Ballarat and Bendigo. In recent years the Melbourne system, generally recognised as one of the largest in the world, has been considerably modernised and expanded. The Adelaide line has also been extended to the Entertainment Centre, and there are plans to expand further.

In Japan, the Kyoto Electric railroad was the first tram system, starting operation in 1895.[34] By 1932, the network had grown to 82 railway companies in 65 cities, with a total network length of 1,479 km (919 mi).[35] By the 1960s the tram had generally died out in Japan.

Two rare but significant alternatives were conduit current collection, which was widely used in London, Washington, D.C. and New York City, and the surface contact collection method, used in Wolverhampton (the Lorain system), Torquay and Hastings in the UK (the Dolter stud system), and currently in Bordeaux, France (the ground-level power supply system).

The convenience and economy of electricity resulted in its rapid adoption once the technical problems of production and transmission of electricity were solved. Electric trams largely replaced animal power and other forms of motive power including cable and steam, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

There is one particular hazard associated with trams powered from a trolley off an overhead line. Since the tram relies on contact with the rails for the current return path, a problem arises if the tram is derailed or (more usually) if it halts on a section of track that has been particularly heavily sanded by a previous tram, and the tram loses electrical contact with the rails. In this event, the underframe of the tram, by virtue of a circuit path through ancillary loads (such as saloon lighting), is life at the full supply voltage, typically 600 volts. In British terminology, such a tram was said to be 'grounded'—not to be confused with the US English use of the term, which means the exact opposite. Any person stepping off the tram completed the earth return circuit and could receive a nasty electric shock. In such an event the driver was required to jump off the tram (avoiding simultaneous contact with the tram and the ground) and pull down the trolley before allowing passengers off the tram. Unless derailed, the tram could usually be recovered by running water down the running rails from a point higher than the tram. The water providing a conducting bridge between the tram and the rails.

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The trolleybus dates back to 29 April 1882, when Dr. Ernst Werner Siemens demonstrated his "Elektromote" in a Berlin suburb. This experiment continued until 13 June 1882, after which there were few developments in Europe, although separate experiments were conducted in the U.S.[7] In 1899, another vehicle which could run either on or off rails was demonstrated in Berlin.[8] The next development was when Louis Lombard-Gérin operated an experimental line at the Paris Exhibition of 1900 after four years of trials, with a circular route around Lake Daumesnil that carried passengers. Routes followed in six places including Eberswalde and Fontainebleau.[9] Max Schiemann on 10 July 1901 opened the world's fourth passenger-carrying trolleybus system, which operated at Bielatal (Biela Valley, near Dresden), in Germany. Schiemann built and operated the Bielatal system, and is credited with developing the under-running trolley current collection system, with two horizontally parallel overhead wires and rigid trolleypoles spring-loaded to hold them up to the wires. Although this system operated only until 1904, Schiemann had developed what is now the standard trolleybus current collection system. In the early days there were many other methods of current collection.[7] The Cédès-Stoll (Mercédès-Électrique-Stoll) system was first operated near Dresden between 1902 and 1904, and 18 systems followed. The Lloyd-Köhler or Bremen system was tried out in Bremen with 5 further installations, and the Cantono Frigerio system was used in Italy.

Leeds and Bradford became the first cities to put trolleybuses into service in Great Britain on 20 June 1911.[8] Supposedly, though it was opened on 20 June, the public was not admitted to the Bradford route until the 24th. Bradford was also the last city to operate trolleybuses in the UK; the system closed on 26 March 1972. The last rear-entrance trolleybus in service in Britain was also in Bradford and is now owned by the Bradford Trolleybus Association. Birmingham was the first UK city to replace a tram route with trolleybuses, while Wolverhampton, under the direction of Charles Owen Silvers, became world-famous for its trolleybus designs.[10] There were 50 trolleybus systems in the UK, London's being the largest. By the time trolleybuses arrived in Britain in 1911, the Schiemann system was well established and was the most common, although the Cédès-Stoll (Mercédès-Électrique-Stoll) system was tried in West Ham (in 1912) and in Keighley (in 1913).

Smaller trackless trolley systems were built in the US early as well. The first non-experimental system was a seasonal municipal line installed near Nantasket Beach in 1904; the first year-round commercial line was built to open a hilly property to development just outside Los Angeles in 1910. The trackless trolley was often seen as an interim step, leading to streetcars. In the US, some systems subscribed to the all-four concept of using buses, trolleybuses, streetcars (trams, trolleys), and rapid transit subway and/or elevated lines (metros), as appropriate, for routes ranging from the lightly used to the heaviest trunk line. Buses and trolleybuses in particular were seen as entry systems that could later be upgraded to rail as appropriate. In a similar fashion, many cities in Britain originally viewed trolleybus routes as extensions to tram (streetcar) routes where the cost of constructing or restoring track could not be justified at the time, though this attitude changed markedly (to viewing them as outright replacements for tram routes) in the years after 1918.[13] Trackless trolleys were the dominant form of new post-World War I [[electric traction, with extensive systems in among others, Los Angeles, Chicago, Rhode Island, and Atlanta; Boston, San Francisco, and Philadelphia still maintain an "all-four" fleet. Some trolleybus lines in the United States (and in Britain, as noted above) came into existence when a trolley or tram route did not have sufficient ridership to warrant track maintenance or reconstruction. In a similar manner, a proposed tram scheme in Leeds, United Kingdom, was changed to a trolleybus scheme to cut costs.

Trolleybuses are uncommon today in North America, but their use is widespread in Europe and Russia. They remain common in many countries which were part of the Soviet Union.[15] Generally trolleybuses occupy a position in usage between street railways (trams) and motorbuses. Worldwide, around 300 cities or metropolitan areas on 5 continents are served by trolleybuses.

This mode of transport operates in large cities, including Athens, Belgrade, Bratislava, Bucharest, Budapest, Chisinau, Geneva, Kyiv, Lyon, Minsk, Pyongyang, Riga, Rome, San Francisco, São Paulo, Sofia, St. Petersburg, Sarajevo, Tallinn, Vilnius and Zurich, as well as in smaller ones such as Arnhem, Bergen, Coimbra, Dayton, Gdynia, Kaunas, Lausanne, Limoges, Lucerne, Modena, Plzeň, Prešov, Salzburg, Solingen, Szeged, and Yalta. As of 2020 Kyiv has, due to its history in the former Soviet Union, the largest trolleybus system in the world in terms of route length while another formerly Soviet city, Minsk, has the largest system in terms of number of routes (which also date back to the Soviet era). Landskrona has the smallest system in terms of route length while Marianske Lazne is the smallest city to be served by trolleybuses. Opened in 1914, Shanghai's trolleybus system is the oldest operating system in the world. With a length of 86 km, route #52 of Crimean Trolleybus is the longest trolleybus line in the world.