Light Rail Supplementing the legacy streetcar lines

Can bi directional light rail using the pantograph supplement the legacy unidirectional streetcar network with trolley poles in cities like Toronto?Also it will use a unique guage track system like toronto or it will use standard guage?Finally will the voltage match with the legacy streetcar voltage of 600 or it will use 750 volt?Please get back to me on that?

rail10 wrote:Can bi directional light rail using the pantograph supplement the legacy unidirectional streetcar network with trolley poles in cities like Toronto?Also it will use a unique guage track system like toronto or it will use standard guage?Finally will the voltage match with the legacy streetcar voltage of 600 or it will use 750 volt?Please get back to me on that?

1) It depends on what you mean by supplement. Do you mean running light rail vehicles on legacy streetcar lines? I don't know about Toronto but generally speaking streetcar tracks are constructed to lower standards and cannot support vehicles as heavy as light rail vehicles. There are other things to take into consideration like turning radius which longer LRVs might not be able to make. Bi-directional vehicles are not incompatible with regular streetcar vehicles. On the other hand, streetcars can be run on light rail lines.
2) Track gauge is irrelevant. You can construct a light rail vehicle to any gauge you like. However, Toronto happens to be planning to construct their light rail lines to standard gauge.
3) MUNI Metro operates on 600V DC so it's certainly possible. However, I don't know whether that's actually recommendable. In Toronto the planned voltage for light rail will be 750V.

I certainly hope Transit City is salvageable!

Edit: I forgot, LRVs can only use overhead catenary wires while older streetcars (like the TTC's) can use either suspension wires or overhead catenary. That's why one uses pantographs and the other uses trolley poles. Modern streetcarscan't use suspension wires because they use pantographs. In fact, the wire tension is being tightened across the TTC in preparation for the new Flexity trams.

Likewise, legacy streetcar lines use trolley frogs and other specialized wire equipment which isn't necessary for pan-equipped LRVs, and also eschew the zig-zagging overhead line best for pantographs (reducing wear across the entire surface of the pan) for a straight line (which reduces dewiring events for shoes and especially wheels.) One can operate LRVs on streetcar lines, but it tends to wear a groove in the contact strip on the pantograph, and the frogs can damage it further unless carefully adjusted to work with both types of equipment. The other way doesn't work.

As others have said--- it all depends. 30 years ago, Philadelphia replaced PCC cars on its West Philadelphia subway-surface lines with Kawasaki LRV's, and retained the suspended wire overhead of the streetcar era, but those LRV's are smaller than "latter day" LRVs and are equipped with trolley poles. The suburban former Red Arrow Lines routes ( Routes 101 & 102) also saw "heritage" trolley pole equipped equippment replaced by Kawasaki LRV's, however, in this instance, the overhead was upgraded to a rudimentary catenary system, as the suburban LRVs are pantograph equipped. BTW-- the city ( subway surface) LRVs are also single ended, and the "heritage" equipment on the Red Arrow was always double-ended ( bi directional).

walt wrote: Philadelphia replaced PCC cars on its West Philadelphia subway-surface lines with Kawasaki LRV's, and retained the suspended wire overhead of the streetcar era, but those LRV's are smaller than "latter day" LRVs and are equipped with trolley poles.

I believe the full name for the late 1970's Boston and San Francisco Boeing cars was Standard Light Rail Vehicle, and they predate SEPTA's Kawasaki cars. Other than Buffalo, New Orleans and Toronto I can't think of a North American city that got LRV's after SEPTA that are not at least 3 truck articulated cars. Buffalo's cars are considerably larger than SEPTA's, New Orleans probably will for a long time be a special heritage operation, and Toronto also bought articulated cars, as well as 2 truck non-articulated.

walt wrote: The suburban former Red Arrow Lines routes ... overhead was upgraded to a rudimentary catenary system.

it depends on your definition of rudimentary. The supporting system doesn't look rudimentary to me, I'd consider those structures to be regular catenary towers.

They're much more than one needs to hold up the span and trolley wires, which are very reminiscent to me of a traditional trolley installation, which I agree is pretty rudimentary for catenary. Hopefully if they do decide to go for a more robust wire system those relatively new poles and towers will still have some service life left in them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Route ... f-road.jpg
looks like it has in the foreground 2 of the old wooden poles, mid ground 2 metal poles with concrete bases. In both those cases there'd be a span wire between the poles to hold up the trolley wire above each track. In the background is another set of metal poles with concrete bases, this set also has a metal crossbeam above the span wire. I assume that's intended to hold up some future non-rudimentary catenary, but for now seems to do nothing.

Actually I agree with much of what Patrick says--- I always saw the city version SEPTA Kawasaki's as more of a 1980's edition streetcar-- in the tradition of the PCC streetcars--- than a "standard" LRV precisely because of the fact that they are smaller, are trolley pole equipped, and are operated as single units in the same manner as the PCC cars they replaced. But-- they are referred to as LRV's. With regard to the suburban versons I would make the same observation-- except that they are pantograph equipped. Other than that, though, they are not significantly different in operating characteristics from the equippment they replaced, particularly the 1949 St. Louis cars, which could also be operated as multi-car trains ( usually only two cars).

And my description of the suburban (Red Arrow) catenary as rudimentary DID refer to the wires themselves--- the towers ARE substantially constructed.

Other than the platform issue and potential wire problems, I don't see any reason that a short LRV couldn't be operated as a streetcar or vice versa. Historically, streetcar companies did use trailers and coupled units in limited-stop service, especially before the days of one-man operation and often on private rights-of-way.

That said, the SEPTA Kawasaki LRVs and the Toronto CLRVs are really just North American-style streetcars in LRV clothing, while modern LRVs dip more from the European style trams.

The first "LRV's" were designed to replace "streetcars". The Boeing car was specifically designed with Boston's and Philadelphia's tight subway curves in mind and could have been gotten in a two truck version.

Toronto and Philadephia could have converted to pantograph operation including equipping the older rolling stock, but chose not to make the expenditure.

mtuandrew wrote:Other than the platform issue and potential wire problems, I don't see any reason that a short LRV couldn't be operated as a streetcar or vice versa. Historically, streetcar companies did use trailers and coupled units in limited-stop service, especially before the days of one-man operation and often on private rights-of-way.

That said, the SEPTA Kawasaki LRVs and the Toronto CLRVs are really just North American-style streetcars in LRV clothing, while modern LRVs dip more from the European style trams.

The way the original question was worded made me think of how interurbans ran on the same tracks as streetcars, the former being quite heavy (around 100,000 lbs per car or heavier still, depending on which operator company). Certainly was the case with the North Shore Line, where lighter streetcars and heavier interurban cars shared tracks in Waukegan especially, and through North Chicago Junction. A modern equivalent of that would be where tram-trains share street tracks with streetcars (e.g. Karlsruhe, where the Stadtbahn shares tracks with the Straßenbahn).

amtrakowitz wrote:The way the original question was worded made me think of how interurbans ran on the same tracks as streetcars, the former being quite heavy (around 100,000 lbs per car or heavier still, depending on which operator company). Certainly was the case with the North Shore Line, where lighter streetcars and heavier interurban cars shared tracks in Waukegan especially, and through North Chicago Junction. A modern equivalent of that would be where tram-trains share street tracks with streetcars (e.g. Karlsruhe, where the Stadtbahn shares tracks with the Straßenbahn).

In fact, interurbans did sometimes have problems sharing tracks with streetcars. They were known to cause track issues all the way up to breaking rails on lightly-built streetcar lines, not to mention derailing more often and more severely. Beyond that, many streetcar systems' power grids weren't up to the task of feeding interurbans, with their heavier weight, four motors, and much higher gearing leading to very high power consumption and causing all the cars on that circuit to stall out.