Nostalgia & History > Grasshopper

Portable crossovers, called grasshoppers in the Twin Cities, were used by streetcar lines to temporarily bridge between parallel double tracks when street repairs necessitated repairs to one track of the pair.

I remember a Plymouth East 25th streetcar tiptoeing over one of these at each end of streetwork on 25th St. in Minneapolis - about 1950. Motorman slowed to a bare creep. One of my earliest memories. In retrospect, it had to be nervous for the motorman.

Also shown is a work motor climbing onto a grasshopper in downtown St. Paul.

Anyone else remember ever seeing these things?

-John

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When PCCs came along, all properties which used these had to elongate the tapers on the ramped ends so the track brakes wouldn't get all snarled up in the apparatus.

A friend of mine, who worked for SEPTA at the time, told me about the Kawasaki cars and explaining to the Japanese that they had to be able to negotiate a portable crossover. They'd never heard of one, so he loaded them into his company car and drove out to one of the lines where one was in use. They'd never seen one and took hundreds of pictures.

Also, if you have a copy of the book "A Rainbow of Traction", take a look at the picture on the bottom of page 64. It shows an Electroliner going over one of these things somewhere in the streets of Milwaukee. The photo's caption completely misses this point.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/14 19:15 by EtoinShrdlu.

Here is a picture of a temporary switch. TTC is the Toranto Transit Commission. I was also looking (unsuccessfully) for a picture of a hose jumper -- a somewhat similar device for streetcars to cross fire hoses. There is a set at Orange Empire on a LARY line car in Barn 1. LARY is Los Angeles Railway (street cars).

Marty Bernard

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I did a Google search for Railroad Temporary Switches and under the Search items I found a Patent for a temporary switch that may be similar to the one that LarryDoyle shows in this posting. The temporary switch in the Patent can easily and quickly be moved from place to place.

http://www.google.com/patents/US1340992

The Google image search for Railroad Temporary Switches gives lots of pictures of switches.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/01/14 05:30 by flynn.