Nostalgia & History > streetcar switches

I was watching a movie today and noticed a scene where various streetcars would go in diferrent directions when coming to a switch in the street. I saw no motorman get out to throw these street switches, so my question is... How did they throw street switches for different routes in those days? Possibly electro-magnetically from the car? Any info?...Pat

Electric Switch. You power up approaching the switch it throws reverse. If you coast thru it stays lined normal.

Ahhh...Thanx!

I'll be darned, you learn something new every day. I often wondered the same thing.

Frisco1522 Wrote:
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> I'll be darned, you learn something new every day.
> I often wondered the same thing.


Me too - and I spent a LOT of time riding the SF Muni. Who says TO isn't worth the price of admission?

Also had to throw the trolley wire switch.
If you study closely old pictures of trolley wire, you can see the induction pickup surrounding the wire coming to a throw.

Paul Ramer
Cincinnati, OH

ats90mph Wrote:
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> Electric Switch. You power up approaching the
> switch it throws reverse. If you coast thru it
> stays lined normal.

Perhaps other cities it was done differently, but in Minneapolis - St Paul it was done as you describe. A sign suspended from the span wire reminded motormen with the wording "Electric Track Switch". This would be a very bad place to forget or ignore the sign, though it was known to happen - probably to motormen with a very short career life expectancy:

Approach the turnout in full parallel
Ignore rulebook and signage, seeing that there are no passengers to pick up or drop off and the street signal is about to change from green to red
Automatically align turnout for diveging route on 50 foot radius curve
Allow carbody to continue on straight route while trucks take diverging route.
Turn in resignation.

-Larry Doyle

There may not have been a trolley wire switch; the wire frogs I'm familiar with were designed to route the trolley wheel or shoe appropriately without any moving parts. On trolley-bus systems this was a different matter; because the shoes on electric buses have to swivel, the frogs have moveable segments to route the shoes correctly. If the bus goes around a corner and the curb-side switch doesn't move to "diverge", the poles will cross and there will be a fireworks display even if it isn't July 4. This will usually trip the breaker at the substation and result in everything (in the case of San Francisco, where I saw this happen, both streetcars and trolley buses) coming to a gradual halt.

A place where I used to transfer between buses in Montreal was previously a streetcar stop, and the waiting passengers lined up right beside an electric switch such as described here.

The turnout was at the bottom of Victoria Avenue hill in Westmount, and in rainy or snowy weather, there area could become waterlogged.

Long time riders told me of being sprayed with slush or muddy water when the switch points flipped over. Some motormen thought this funny when a bunch of high school kids got doused.

In time, those same kids learned they could cause the car to derail on the sharp turnout by swaying on the strap hangers at the rear of the car. There was also a way to cause the pickup to derail from the trolley wire.

ats90mph Wrote:
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> Electric Switch. You power up approaching the
> switch it throws reverse. If you coast thru it
> stays lined normal.

I learned about this from a computer game called "Trolley Time Challenge" that was developed by some guy in Cleveland back in the 90s. It was a pretty cool game for its time.

My dad told me that when he was a motorman on the PE during the 40's that kids would sometimes jam or drop a Coke bottle in the trolley rope pulley covers of the streetcars when they came to a stop. Yah, I could see how that trick would piss off the motorman! It was pretty tough getting them out of the covers and sometimes very time consuming.

Weren't a lot of trolley switches simple spring switches?

On the Muni back in the 60s there was a toggle switch on the dash that said switch. There was also a pickup of some sort on the wire. The operator would hold the switch down while the pole went through the pick up and the switch would reverse. The other ones in the street would take the operator with a bar to horse the point over where it would stay until it was moved back with the bar or a trailing movement.


Nudge