Anna Noyd-Dryver wrote:
Clank wrote:
Anna Noyd-Dryver Wrote in message:



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)?


My post was based on my knowledge and experience of UK heritage tramway
operations, my knowledge of UK heritage tramway maintenance, and of OLE
equipment fitted; and finally the fact that non-heritage tramways using
trolleypoles rather than pantographs are a tiny minority if indeed any
exist at all.

North America seems to be a bit of a hold out with Toronto ,Philadelphia
and Boston still using trolley poles
on normal services, New Orleans is arguable mainly a heritage operation
that locals happen to use because it is there. San Francisco definitely a
heritage operation.

Its worth noting that most of the last few UK systems that did do some
modernisation just before and after WW2 were no longer using poles with
Leeds ,Glasgow, Dundee,Aberdeen having switched to bow collectors and
Sunderland had used Pantographs for a while. Even Birmingham had converted
one route to bow before abandonment. The ones that closed late that
hadn’t were Liverpool ,Sheffield and Llandudno.
Even Blackpool changed most over eventually though to me the older ones
never looked quite right with a Pantograph.


GH