History of trams
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 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 advantages of high-pressure engines were: The disadvantages were: A number of municipal and company-owned street tramways were built or extended with the application of cognate technology related to high pressure steam innovations.
In Dresden, Germany, in 1901 an elevated suspended cable car following the Eugen Langen one-railed floating tram system started operating.
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 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.
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 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'.
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.
[32] The system for collecting electricity from the overhead wires was soon improved, however, through Frank J. Sprague's trolley pole and Werner von Siemens' bow collector.
[44] As well, electric systems were built in Adelaide, Ballarat, Bendigo, Brisbane, Fremantle, Geelong, Hobart, Kalgoorlie, Launceston, Leonora, Newcastle, Perth and Sydney.
In this event, the underframe of the tram, by virtue of a circuit path through ancillary loads (such as saloon lighting), is live at the full supply voltage, typically 600 volts.
[48][49] Attempts to use batteries as a source of electricity were made from the 1880s and 1890s, with unsuccessful trials conducted in among other places Bendigo and Adelaide in Australia, and for about 14 years as The Hague accutram of HTM in the Netherlands.
Galveston Island Trolley in Texas operated diesel trams due to the city's hurricane-prone location, which would result in frequent damage to an electrical supply system.
The tram, which runs on a circular route around the town of Portland, uses dummies and salons formerly used on the extensive Melbourne cable tramway system and now beautifully restored.
In March 2015, China South Rail Corporation (CSR) demonstrated the world's first hydrogen fuel cell vehicle tramcar at an assembly facility in Qingdao.
The chief engineer of the CSR subsidiary CRRC Qingdao Sifang, Liang Jianying, said that the company is studying how to reduce the running costs of the tram.
However, on one steep segment of track, they are assisted by cable tractors, which push the trams uphill and act as brakes for the downhill run.
[57] However, the demise of the streetcar came when lines were torn out of the major cities by "bus manufacturing or oil marketing companies for the specific purpose of replacing rail service with buses.
For example, the tram network survived in Budapest but for a considerable period of time bus fares were higher to recognize the superior quality of the buses.
In the United States, there have been allegations that the Great American streetcar scandal was responsible for the replacement of trains with buses, but critics of this theory point to evidence that larger economic forces were driving conversion before General Motors' actions and outside of its reach.
Certainly, the oldest system of all, the Swansea and Mumbles Railway of 1807, was purchased by The South Wales Transport Company (which operated a large motorbus fleet in the area) and despite vociferous local opposition, closed down in 1960.
On the other hand, tram systems were generally retained or modernized in most communist countries, as well as Switzerland, West Germany, Austria, Belgium, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Japan etc.
The priority given to personal vehicles and notably to the automobile led to a loss in quality of life, particularly in large cities where smog, traffic congestion, sound pollution and parking became problematic.
In Germany the Stadtbahnwagen B was a modern tram (or tram-train) hybrid built to run on heavy rail tracks in a premetro type of system.
The renaissance of light rail in North America began in 1978 when the Canadian city of Edmonton adopted the German Siemens-Duewag U2 system, followed three years later by Calgary and San Diego.
The trend to light rail in the United Kingdom was firmly established with the success of the Manchester Metrolink system and Sheffield Supertram in 1992, followed by Midland Metro in Birmingham in 1999, and Tramlink in London in 2000.
In 1994 Strasbourg opened a system with novel British-built trams, specified by the city, with the goal of breaking with the archaic conceptual image that was held by the public.
The Karlsruhe model was one of the first in the modern era and provided one-seat rides where several connections would have been necessary before, increasing ridership by significant amounts upon opening of service compared to the prior bus or local train routes.
