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Old February 9th 19, 12:02 AM posted to uk.railway,uk.transport.london
Clank Clank is offline
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Default DfT favours battery trams

Anna Noyd-Dryver Wrote in message:
Clank wrote: On the other hand... What's wrong with trolley poles? They seem pretty reliable even in inclement weather*. On a tram, where the poles wouldn't even have to deal with the vehicle moving all over the road to overtake etc., I don't see any reason why they should be particularly problematic. More prone to dewirement, particularly as speed increases. Junction'pointwork' more complicated and prone to failure. More maintenancerequired too, I think. Need changing over at every terminus. Anna Noyd-Dryver


With all due respect - and I use that in its extremely unusual totally sincere sense - are all those true, or are they just "received wisdom" used to back-justify the UK's resistance to trolleys (and indeed trams)?

The junction pointwork here is generally lightweight and simple, and even if it wasn't how much trouble would it be; an awful lot (crossovers etc.) can be done entirely passively, so given that a system like Croydon Tramlink would require all of about 3* sets of points how much overhead (no pun intended) do they really add?

On maintenance - trolleybuses are used in cities like Bucharest and L'viv which are not exactly famous for their exemplary standards of infrastructure maintenance, and seem to run completely reliably. L'viv in particular has streets that are literally falling apart with tram rails that are so loosely aquainted with the streets they run over, and so worn and damaged at every joint, that it's a miracle the trams don't fall off them - but keeping the OHL up for the trolleybuses seems to be no problem at all.




* Approximately, and I've not looked in detail, but pretty sure the central loop, and all the various sets of track points for the single line sections on the Wimbledon branch could be handled by passive trolley OHL with no points required - so the only places you need actual points in the OHL are Sandilands, Arena & Church Street.


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