History of trams
The history of trams, streetcars, or trolleys began in the early nineteenth century. It can be divided up into several discrete periods defined by the principal means of motive power used. Eventually, the so-called US "street railways" were deemed advantageous auxiliaries of the new elevated and/or tunneled metropolitan steam railways.
Horse-drawn
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 electric tramcars, until closure in 1961.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.
The first tram in South America opened on 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, Netherlands East Indies.
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 horse car.
Beginning in the late 19th century, horse cars were largely replaced by electric-powered trams. Several inventors and companies were involved in the transition. Werner von Siemens pioneered electric traction in the early 1880s in Berlin. In the US, Frank J. Sprague's groundbreaking work collecting power from overhead wires using trolleys kickstarted the transition. 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 horse cars 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. New York City had a regular horse car service on the Bleecker Street Line until its closure in 1917. 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. 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 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 on 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 in Disneyland.
Steam
High-pressure steam engine
The advantages of high-pressure engines were:- They could be made much smaller than previously for a given power output. There was thus the potential for steam engines to be developed that were small and powerful enough to propel themselves and other objects. As a result, steam power for transportation now became a practicality in the form of ships and land vehicles, which revolutionized cargo businesses, travel, military strategy, and essentially every aspect of society.
- Because of their smaller size, they were much less expensive.
- They did not require the significant quantities of condenser cooling water needed by atmospheric engines.
- They could be designed to run at higher speeds, making them more suitable for powering machinery.
- In the low-pressure range they were less efficient than condensing engines, especially if steam was not used expansively.
- They were more susceptible to boiler explosions.The main difference between how high-pressure and low-pressure steam engines work is the source of the force that moves the piston. In a high-pressure engine, most of the pressure difference is provided by the high-pressure steam from the boiler.
Cognate technology
- Traction engines in steam vehicles
- *Tractors
- *Rollers
- Reduced mass steam motors and launch-type boilers in:
- * Towed pump engines for firefighting
- * Marine engines for a larger ship's carried-boats, canal boats, small watercraft work-boats.
- * Lighter railmotors in general
- **Railcars or Motorcars
- **Minimum-gauge railway
- **Light railway – properly distinct from a tramway which operates under differing rules and may share a road.
Tram engine
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 had to replenish fuel and water more frequently compared to other locomotives.
Tram engines began to be used after popular promotion by George Francis Train of the United States, so called, "Street Railway" car companies using successful citywide horse-drawn railway transportation systems and passage of Tramways Act 1870.
File:Grantham Steam Tramway - TheEngineer1873 p.353.png|thumb|Grantham steam tramway car with vertical boiler|leftThe first mechanical trams were powered by steam. Generally, there were two types of steam tram.
- Detached Engine
- Combined Engine and Car
The other style of steam tram had the steam engine in the body of the tram, referred to as a steam tramway car. 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.
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 some 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.
File:Melbourne cable tram 1905.jpg|thumb|Cable tram dummy and trailer on the St Kilda Line in Melbourne in 1905.
File: from Union Line Building, n.d. by.jpg|thumb|right|Trams on George Street, Sydney, circa 1919–20. Sydney once had one of the largest tram networks in the world.
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 of track, though during its heyday, Sydney's network was larger, with about 1,600 cars in service at any one time at its peak during the 1930s. There were also two isolated cable lines in Sydney, the North Sydney line from 1886 to 1900, 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 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 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 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 non-driven 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 restrains the car so that it goes 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. 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.