Passenger Trains > .

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/21 16:46 by F40PHR231.

Great Pix as usual.

Does it ever stop raining in Oregon? It was raining in 1943 when the Army sent me there!

I wonder if there will be a day where we will get 2 streetcars moving past the Go by Streetcar sign. That'll be pretty darn sweet!

Great shots - fascinating to see old methods of transportation make a
startling return.

Probably not the time or place to ask this - but, if the street cars
are to be operated electrically with overhead wires, would it not
be easier and cheaper to have trackless trolleys? If it's a capacity
issue, smaller cars ran more often would seem a good trade.

I'm a street car supporter but was wondering...

/Mitch

Portland went with the Streetcars because it had better potential for growth in communities than trolley buses showed. Most people look at the rails rather than the overhead wire to see what is permanent vs. what could be moved.

Rail in a community shows something that is most permanent than overhead wire buses. Tacoma has a great example of this as the free bus went from 300 a day to over 1800 a day with the streetcar.

Ridership on the streetcar regularly sees 12,500 on weekdays, 11,000 on Saturdays, and 6,000 on Sundays. Overall annual ridership is 3.9 million passengers.

What type of wheels do the streetcars use - i.e., railroad flanges/width, compromise flanges/width, traditional narrow wheels with smaller flanges?

I realize that the rail is probably all encased in concrete now, but when they add some more, could somebody check the size--looks like fairly small cross-section tramway rail. I recall reading somewhere that one of the advantages of the "streetcar" as opposed to "light rail" was that the streetcar could use lighter rail and not require as much excavation of the pavement. Despite the term, most nominally "light rail" systems use 115-lb rail that would be adequate for a main-line railway that didn't have a lot of traffic.

Yep. I've got an ancient streetcar trackage design book around here somewhere. As I recall (and if my memory is correct) about 100 years ago 60/80lb track was pretty common for streetcar service. In fact sometimes you considered the cross-section of the rail in terms of electrical resistance per foot, and used a larger rail if it helped get power to the far end of the line without too much voltage drop.