Thanks for your remarks, Noel and Chas, on my interurban postings. I know they’re OT, but local examples are hard to come by.
Noel, your comments on the Wallsend line expose how tramway development in NSW stalled after WW1. The Newcastle system was only electrified in 1923 after strong political pressure, and it was a lazy, derisory choice to use inferior rolling stock on an operation that otherwise would have been killed off in 1926 if still all steam, along with Maitland, Broken Hill, Arncliffe-Bexley and the remnant government line at Parramatta. The NSW transport bureaucracy was all too keen to forfeit its obligations in the 20s but if things had been different the Wallsend line, and its unelectrified extensions to Speers Point and West Wallsend, would have been potential beneficiaries of the 1200v experiments conducted by NSWGT, and would have been ideal territory for a version of the 1926 “railcoach” design proposed for the unbuilt 1500v electrification of the Sutherland-Cronulla steam tram line at the time.
Chas, here’s a pic of a Milwaukee Electric (KMCL ownership postwar) train, including an articulated car, on the Port Washington balloon loop :
Imagine a modern two-rooms-and-bath low floor trying to get around that.
As for the fate of an interurban, what’s more dignified - going out in a blaze of full-on glory like the North Shore, or fading away into into atomised remnants like the Illinois Terminal ?
Here’s some freight shunting in the former IT subway in St Louis, and on the McKinley Bridge approach in 2002, before abandonment in 2004. Now the former subway has been filled in :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6t6L87KwfE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6t6L87KwfE
For a bit more classic interurban action, here’s the Lake Shore Electric Railway in Ohio, and the Union Traction Company in Kansas and Oklahoma - both tributes to the die hard resilience of electric traction technology, if not the financial resilience of the industry built on it :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiJUipVMtAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiJUipVMtAM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgXO7xiKCBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgXO7xiKCBE
Tony G
> On 19 Oct 2017, at 6:58 am, 'Noel Reed'noelreed10@... [TramsDownUnder] TramsDownUnder@...> wrote:
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> Tony,
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> There is a fascination about the rural interurban lines in the USA. Maybe the closest we have come in NSW would be the rural section of Newcastle’s Wallsend tramway beyond Lambton. It was originally single track and was later duplicated except for the approaches to Wallsend and Plattsburg.
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> I travelled on the very last tram to Wallsend, LP 316 in 1949. This tram carried several early ‘tram fans’ , also cinema patrons home from the ‘picture shows’ in Newcastle, then laid up at the terminus for a dawn departure back to Newcastle.
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> The old Brill max-traction trucks must have gone well beyond their design speed down the hill beyond Lambton. [See attachment].
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> Noel Reed
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> From:TramsDownUnder@... mailto:TramsDownUnder@yahoogroups.com [mailto:TramsDownUnder@yahoogroups.com mailto:TramsDownUnder@yahoogroups.com]
> Sent: Thursday, 19 October 2017 5:12 AM
> To:TramsDownUnder@... mailto:TramsDownUnder@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [TramsDownUnder] (OT) Illinois Terminal video
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> Amazing and wonderful! Those in-town corners at right-angle intersections would give modern street cars a heart attack! (or at least a derailment!)
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> Thanks so much for posting.
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> Chas
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> On 18 October 2017 at 10:46, Tony Gallowayarg@... mailto:arg@aapt.net.au [TramsDownUnder] TramsDownUnder@... mailto:TramsDownUnder@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
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> Despite being one of the last rural interurban systems there’s little video of the Illinois Terminal railroad on Youtube - but I found this on Facebook :
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> https://www.facebook.com/bob.kalal.3/videos/10208028792556898/ https://www.facebook.com/bob.kalal.3/videos/10208028792556898/
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> It’s a contrast to the high frequency inter city operation of the North Shore Line, and more representative of the “typical” midwestern interurban.
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> They still manage to pile on the speed though.
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> Tony G
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> http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient
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> <Coupled 'LP' trams Lambton - Jesmond (Wallsend Line) 1949 N F Reed - Copy (2).jpg>