Also the inner lip. Served 2 purposes 1. when the street was being paved to keep paving material out of flangway. Also more important as street railway flanges were shallower & wheels narrower, it helped to guide the wheel & reduce hunting.
Rgds IGN
One other comment. If you are looking for some info in book form 2 I can recommend.
1. From Kalmbach Traction Modelers Guidebook. This is currently out of print but can be found. I've seen any number of used copies for sale at train shows. I remember this having pictures of track switches.
2. From Carstens Traction Handbook .It is not quite as good as the one from Kalmbach. I do not remember if it shows trackwork as well.
Street railway switches are thrown a variety of ways. The modern method uses an inductive system on the overhead wire in combination with an in cab control
The older systems that I remember are from San Francisco. San Francisco Municipal Railway(MUNI) used a system that had a connector on the overhead wire. When you applied power thru a point(there was a yellow dot paint mark on the pavement) this would throw the switch in the diverging position. If you coasted thru the mark the switch would remain in the normal position.
The switch itself only had one point unlike a railroad switch. The side with the point would actually guide the flange on one side of the track. On the other side of the track on street railways the car would ride on the flange not the wheel. And thru the switch the wheel would only be (steered ?) on one side.
To thru the switch all you would need is a long bar that had a flat end. Put the bar between the diverging rails & give a twist to change the direction of the switch.
Regarding streetcar switches on streets: On almost all railways, both points move together, connected by a bar. On U.S. trolley lines, only one rail would have a movable point. I'm not certain, but it was at a logical place: to move a flange onto the diverting route. On the systems with less money, the motorman would grab the switch iron, open the right-hand door, walk in front of the car, move the point, get back in the car and continue. I rode many streetcars in the northeast during the 1940's and I think I never saw a motorman go behind the car to realign the switch, something quite important with railroad sidings. It was presumed that the motorman of the following streetcar would take a good look at where the switchpoint was and change it if needed.
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On systems wealthy enough to have electric switches installed in some locations, there were various methods of instructing the switch to move or remain in position. In some PCC systems, there was a small lever on the motorman's dashboard. In other systems, a white line would be painted on the street and "Power on" at that point would flip the switch. On a day with puddles, you could spot a sudden geyser rise when an electric switch was moved.
(2) It's girder rail. The inner flange is mainly to keep the flangeway open, and to provide a solid "backstop" for the paving so its edge doesn't crumple and break down - and also fill the flangeway. It's also used in tangent track, where the guard rail function really isn't necessary - but on those sharp curves, no rational railway person would ignore that possible benefit.
For more info, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tramway_track - esp. the under the "Grooved Rail" heading. Compare with the LR55 system (first I'd heard of that one !).
Also:
http://www.wirthrail.com/en/product_girder.htm
Hope this is helpful.
- Paul North.
There was (and is!) a variety of ingenious ways of throwing facing point switches without having to get out of the car (which is tedious). I have no idea of how many different approaches there were. Most of them allowed the motorman, in one way or another, to throw the switch either by a kick of the controller or a momentary off of the controller at just the right point. One has to remember that trolleys were -- and are -- characterized by an amazing array of Rube Goldberg devices to do things -- most of which work surprisingly well.
Some switches are controlled by dispatchers in exactly the same way that regular railroad switches are.
And there is that trap door... in the old days, the motorman had a switch iron, and could just open one of the front windows, lean out with the switch iron, and throw the switch manually!
(1) Submarine switches and tongue switch points. Some points are designed to be run through only in trailing point direction and have no switch stand (box switch) in the obligatory trap door. Depending how heavy the railcars are, there may be one or two switch points in the cast tongue switch troughs.
(2) like Q described, using "chairs" and steel shapes hung off the rail to hold open the flangeways (which at minimum tend to be 2 1/2 inches wide by two inches deep or meet the freight railroad check-gauge requirements in turnouts), a 2 x 4 is placed against the rail before paving and is then ripped out, or more likely 154# or 172# crane rail.
....Gabe....When a streetcar track is embedded in the street, you will find a "channel" on the flange side of the rail and I believe it {at least sometimes}, is formed by a rail positioned on it's side. One of the functions would be to keep clearance for the flange...To keep that space "open".
Street running where tracks cross, etc....in some cases perhaps spring positioned switches.....Since all running directions are always the same, they can design to have the springs set the "switch" the direction the streetcar must travel. One traveling the other direction that must "go thru that switch", then must "push" it to open and allow the car thru that section.
This seems to be some of what I have in memory from the Johnstown Traction Co. back in Johnstown, Pa. Abandoned: June 10, 1960...if memory serves correctly. Info of it and probably photos can be accessed on the internet.
Edit: Dozens and dozens of street car photos on Johnstown Traction site....just by entering that Co. name.
Quentin
I was looking at a picture of a typical 1920s era street car system yesterday. It was an intersection, where you had two lines crossing two lines and all of the corresponding maze of switches.
Two questions:(1) How do street car switches work? At least in all of the pictures I see, there are always a half dozen switches at major intersections and no obvious switch lever. Also, does the street car driver get out throw the switch, go through it, and then throw it back? Given the number of times per day that the street cars would go through these numerous switches, it just seems like a curious system.
(2) Most street car rail I have seen has, for lack of a better term, an inner lip to it. What was the purpose of this inner lip? To keep the road from encroaching on the rail? To serve as an additional check for keeping the car to jump the rail?
Gabe
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