I’m trying to figure out what the strips that look like tape on these trolley wires are. Any guesses?
My guess would be some sort of notification or warning system that the car is approaching an intersection.
I believe they are for points in the support wire run that would otherwise be too low to keep the powered wire run at the correct height by simply hanging it from the above support wire. (the overhead wire that supports the electric wire would sag too low, or has sagged over time too low).
Like @kanicbird , I believe they are to stabilize and support the lines. But I believe they mainly provide lateral stability, more than vertical.
I’m going to agree. They are staggered, and over opposite lanes of traffic.
Notice that there are train tracks crossing the trolley tracks. Now imagine what would happen if the trolley pole slipped off the wire at this point and a train-that-can’t-stop is approaching the intersection. That mesh is electrified and will keep the trolley pole full of electricity until the trolley is across the intersection.
Follow-up question: why are there two power lines in each direction? The streetcars I’m familiar with only use one, and the streetcar uses a trolley arm with a sort of cupped wire cradle that doesn’t slip off. Could these streetcars be using pantographs?
(I’m guessing this photo is from the late 30’s or earlly 40’s, and my memory does not extend that far back. Maybe things were different in those days).
From my friend who runs the Lakeshore Railway website:
They are “Trolley Guards …inverted mesh troughs over the trolley wire at dangerous locations where
you could not afford the trolley coming off the wire and stopping the car.”
Looking closely at where the left-right guy wires intersect with the north-south trolley wires, only the Top wire is supported, and the Bottom wire is suspended from it. Which is normal.
It is common to have a ‘loomed’ attachment from the top (suspension) wire to the bottom (contact) wire, in the area where the two wires are close together, and I looked to see if the ‘ribbon’ appearance is an artifact, like the ‘double wire’ appearance. But – there is no other indication that the photograph was slow, or out of focus, so I think the OP is correct: there is a weird binding between the support wire and the contact wire.
Overhead Contact Systems (OCS) for electrified streetcars can lead to major rat’s-nests of wires, poles, and suspenders. This is a bit off-topic here, but if anyone is interested, here is a major 39-page report (PDF) focusing specifically on the visual impact of OCS in many North American cities, with examples of bad and good systems, and how to improve them. This report has dozens of photos of OCS from many cities, some clean, and some are hideous, many include visual intrusiveness ratings in the captions. Unfortunately, the quality of the reproductions of the photos themselves is hideous, so take them with a grain of Silver Nitrate.
[quote=“Roderick_Femm, post:7, topic:940730”]
Follow-up question: why are there two power lines in each direction? The streetcars I’m familiar with only use one, and the streetcar uses a trolley arm with a sort of cupped wire cradle that doesn’t slip off. Could these streetcars be using pantographs?
[/quote]In this case, I don’t believe the two wires are at the same level. I believe one wire is above the other. The higher wire is being used to support the mesh.
Poles do slip off wire occasionally. The mesh is there because it could happen at RR intersections.
FYI: While uncommon, the running rails are not always used for current return. The London subway use a fourth rail. Older Cincinnati trolleys used a second wire. See Wikipedia article, “Streetcars in Cincinnati”, for an example.
This thread has reminded me that I used to live up in The City. San Francisco. And when I did I’d see lost contacts all the time. SF MUNI streetcars and buses stopped dead in the streets, and the SF MUNI driver trying to reattach the pole. It was almost a daily occurrence.
Usually it was a bus at a corner. I’m guessing that the bus had to swing wide to get around a car or some other obstacle. Every once in a while it was a street car, and I’m not sure what caused the lost contact.
I haven’t seen that in many years now. But MUNI also doesn’t have many more overhead wire electric streetcars and buses anymore. All those wires overhead were unsightly.
I used to take MUNI every day but my old line, the 29 San Bruno, ran diesel buses. I remember once or twice it happened when I was on another line. It was a bummer when it did because it meant you were going to be a little late.
I moved out of The City (as we call it around here) over 20 years ago. I’m about an hour south now and I get up there maybe a couple of times or so a month. I can’t remember the last time I saw overhead wires there!
@Roderick_Femm, are you still in The City? Or anyone else? Are there any left anywhere? I’m guessing there are a few remaining, but if so it’s nowhere near what it used to be back in the 1980s. Hmmm.
The times, they are a-changin’…
All Cincinnati streetcars except a very few routes in the farthest outer neighborhoods (and the system in northern Kentucky) used dual overhead wires rather than rail returns, due to a lawsuit by the phone company about static on the phone lines. The wiring was excessive, but it made converting to trolleybus a breeze.
Back in the day nearly all street railways had directly-suspended trolley wire. Catenary, where the trolley wire is hung from a smaller cable above, was limited to electrified railroads and a few high-speed interurban railways. It does look like they installed a short section of catenary in the OP’s photo to help keep the trolley wire and mesh level, which would reduce the chance of de-wiring, with some extra diagonals to help keep everything steady. It could also just be another wire for stabilization, since we can’t see it so clearly. Here’s a better shot from another location: Level railway crossing with trolley guard, Queen Street Ea… | Flickr
On single-track streetcar lines and interurbans, you would still sometimes see dual overhead to simplify signaling and eliminate the need for frogs/switches in the wiring, so both wires were hot rather than one hot and one neutral. That only works if the cars use trolley poles though, since a pantograph would touch both wires at the same time, but frogs/switches aren’t needed with pantographs and signaling is usually done in the tracks now anyway.
I remember the streetcar drivers and especially the trolley bus drivers in Toronto in the 60’s having to get out and re-attach the pole to the wire. It was a not-uncommon occurrence. If I recall correctly, Vancouver had a LOT of the trolley busses, same problem. Going through intersections where sets of wires crossed or split was always dicey.
I am still in the city. There is one street car line and 5 light rail lines that start out in the neighborhoods and converge on downtown Market Street (underground now), but they have been stopped during Covid. Some of the lines are being re-started now. The streetcar line runs straight up and down Market above ground from the Castro to the Embarcadero, using historic streetcars/trolleys from various cities around the world (if you google “san francisco streetcars” and click on images, that’s what you’ll see). And there are still lots of trolley buses, as they seem to do better on the hills.
As for streetcar poles losing contact, I have never seen it in the 40 years I have lived here. It is always the trolley buses, because they bounce around on the street. Streetcars don’t bounce around, they are rock steady on tracks. And our light rail cars use pantographs.
In Philadelphia they were called ‘Trackless Trolleys’, the same problem with the arm coming off the wire and the driver has to get out with the pole. Unlike the tracked system these buses can make turns at regular street corners and if they go too wide it can be disconnected in the middle of an intersection. I asked a driver how hard it was to get those turns done right (they did have lines painted on the street to help), he said he almost quit his first week on the job. You could hear what he meant in his voice when he said it was “a very hard week”.
I liked this picture the best!
