Streetcar Museum Loop Trivia

There are 20 - plus operating electric railway museums in North America. All but one or two have an out-and-back demonstration electric railway line, as opposed to a giant one-way loop. At the moment only five of these have turning loops at both ends of the line to allow prototypcal operation of single-ended cars, such as most PCC's. I say at the moment because the sixth one, the National Capital Trolley Museum line is temporarily out of service while being partially relocated.

The trivia part is that these five operations with loops have four different track gauges! Only Seashore and Edmunton are standard gauge. In ascending order by gauge, the others are: Halton County ( 4' 10 7/8"), Pennsylvania Trolley Museum ( 5' 2 1/2") and the Baltimore Streetcar Museum (5'-4 1'2").

The fifth gauge used by North American Trolley Museums is 3'-6" used on the one-way loop at Orange Empire, and that loop is dual gauge!

At the moment I don't think anyone is using a reversing wye at the end of the line instead of a loop, but I hear a rumor that the relocated terminal at National Capital will be using a wye. Can anyone confirm?

Up in Rochester, NY, the New York Museum of Transportation line runs out and back, using double-ended Strafford cars. One end of the line has a loop, but it is OOS.

polybalt wrote:There are 20 - plus operating electric railway museums in North America. All but one or two have an out-and-back demonstration electric railway line, as opposed to a giant one-way loop. At the moment only five of these have turning loops at both ends of the line to allow prototypcal operation of single-ended cars, such as most PCC's. I say at the moment because the sixth one, the National Capital Trolley Museum line is temporarily out of service while being partially relocated.

The trivia part is that these five operations with loops have four different track gauges! Only Seashore and Edmunton are standard gauge. In ascending order by gauge, the others are: Halton County ( 4' 10 7/8"), Pennsylvania Trolley Museum ( 5' 2 1/2") and the Baltimore Streetcar Museum (5'-4 1'2").

The fifth gauge used by North American Trolley Museums is 3'-6" used on the one-way loop at Orange Empire, and that loop is dual gauge!

At the moment I don't think anyone is using a reversing wye at the end of the line instead of a loop, but I hear a rumor that the relocated terminal at National Capital will be using a wye. Can anyone confirm?

I never knew Halton County wasn't standard gauge.
I knew that PTM had 5'2 1/2, and I knew that Baltimore was wider then standard gauge, but I never realized just how many different gauges of streetcar tracks were still being used!

I can understand why trolley museums don't like wyes. Any reversing of a trolley involving backpoling can be a pain, and it doesn't help when you have to throw the switch, watch the pole, back up, etc. from a single-ended car. A loop is much simpler, especially since it just involves going forward.

Also, with a loop, you can fill it with equipment until you block the way out. You know that the car in front of you is not going to back up for any reason. With a wye, you need to leave some spacing so that cars have time to negotiate the different legs without the chance of a collision.

Peter,

Shame on you for not mentioning the streetcar loop (Technically the Car Line Subdivision) at our very own Illinois Railway Museum!

Standard gauge, roughly a mile long, operated with clockwise current of traffic...and the Automatic Block Signals were repaired and re-activated last fall!

And the Trackless Trolley (Trolley Bus) line along Central Avenue uses a loop at the Electric Park end and a turning wye at the parking lot end of the route.

NZ
Fellow IRM "lifer"

Shame on you for not mentioning the streetcar loop (Technically the Car Line Subdivision) at our very own Illinois Railway Museum!

I did not explain well that I was only talking about end-of-line turning loops on out-and back lines, and then confused things more by mentioning the "one-way" loop at Orange Empire to try to pick up one more different track gauge. IRM certainly has a "one-way" loop that allows operation of single-ended cars, but by itself does not allow a car to be turned to face the other direction on the same section of track. But to turn cars end-for-end, IRM also has one of the very few electrified museum wyes in North America. Orange Empire also has one which, like IRM's, is large enough radius to turn conventional railroad equipment as well as traction equipment, but theirs only has two of the three legs electrified so far.There are two small radius wyes I can think of: Pennsylvania Trolley Museum and Old Pueblo trolley in Tucson, neither used for end-of-line turnbacks.

And the Trackless Trolley (Trolley Bus) line along Central Avenue uses a loop at the Electric Park end and a turning wye at the parking lot end of the route.

Thanks for mentioning the Trolley Bus wye at IRM. It is an fully electrified wye, just with no tracks! IRM is the only Museum in North America that can operate trolley busses and turn them at both ends. And all ( North American) trolley busses are single-ended.

Both of the loops at Seashore were salvaged from installations on the Boston system. The loop at the Visitors' Center was removed from the Arlington Heights facility after the line to that location was abandoned in 1955. The loop at Talbott Park was located at Cook Junction during a temporary cutback of the Riverside Line there in the 1970s. The loops are operated in opposite directions to equalize wheel wear. The Visitors' Center loop is the tighter of the two. North Shore trains can negotiate both, but most rapid transit trains cannot clear the Visitors' Center Loop. As a rule of thumb, anything restricted from one loop is restricted from both.