ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Tramways in Vienna

I know the DART power system was installed by Siemens in 1982/3 from scratch as the system had never been electrified before. So I'm guessing it prob. uses a pretty standard German/European way of doing things.

1500V DC

The second wire could be some signalling thing. Some tramway lines used three wires, two of them fed the line voltage back to a signal (the pantograph just connected the wires) to indicate the section was busy.
Third rail system means here the power rail (+750V) is to the left or right of the runnig tracks, slightly elevated and the power pickup comes from below, so the top of it can be fully insulated. Trams usually have the catenary positive and the tracks negative. I think AC setups have a hot catenary and neutral rails.
1500V DC is Italian/French railway stuff. Austria and Germany rather use 650 or 750V DC or 15kV AC.

DJ, do you have any pictures of this arrangement? It sounds somewhat unusual. I can think of no reason why a steel railed system would need an aerial return path – it would only (and greatly) complicate the overhead with two potentials up there. I can only think of track circuit immunization but there are many other successful ways of overcoming this – using ac track circuits with dc traction current for example.

An early (read c. 1900) proposal for the London Underground involved a Hungarian three phase system using two overhead wires in a corner grounded delta arrangement and I would doubt such an arrangement on a modern 1980’s Metro. Manchester Metrolink uses two parallel wires a few cm apart on its on-street section. I think it is to spread the load but has an added advantage that at the delta junction in the centre of the city the pair of wires split at one junction and pair up with another wire at the following junction, i.e. no city centre wire terminations are required.

I see Dublin’s new Luas trams are to the European standard gauge of 4’8½” (1435mm) and not the Irish gauge of 5’3”.

On the trolley pole overhead collector, one can still travel on trams fitted with these on revenue service at Blackpool and the Manx Electric Railway. I remember traveling on a double-deck Blackpool tram some years ago when all the lights went out, there was a loud metallic bang and the tram glided to a stop. The metal end of the trolley pole that contains the small pick-up wheel had fallen off! The powerless cripple was pushed some distance to the next loop by the following service.

[Edited to correct nationality of 3 phase]


[This message has been edited by Hutch (edited 12-30-2003).]

Almost all of the old tram systems were gone by the time I was born in 1966, so the first time I ever rode a tram was about 1977. That was at a Preservation Society in Devon, and was just a single line laid specially as a tourist attraction.

I rode the Blackpool trams around 1988, and it was good to see them in service as both a combined tourist attraction and as a daily means of transport for many of the locals.

There's some interesting information about Blackpool's trams here:
http://www.allanburke.freeserve.co.uk/trams/default.htm

There is a BIG fuss over Dublin's LUAS system for a number of reasons:

It's:
*massively over budget
*not open on time
*causing much more construction disruption than had been anticipated
*not inter-linked with exsisting transport infrastructure (Bus, Dart, Arrow or Surburban rail)
the radial lines themselves don't even come into one central terminus so you'd have to walk to go from one part of the city to another.
*The difference in guage also means that there's no possibility of LUAS operating over the DART network.
*The proposed metro system cost estimates place it as the most expensive metro project (euro per KM) ever built!

Oh yeah, despite being ridiculous over-priced it still manages to cross the busiest dual-carriage way junction in the city AT ROAD LEVEL!!! via traffic lights..

The DART was a very cost effective project in comparison.

Admittedly, part of the problem is that this kind of infrastructure should have been built in the 1950s and 60s and is just arriving far too late and was not really planned for.

Dublin, unlike most European cities, adopted a very American development plan pinning all of its hopes on the car. It's ended up as the lowest density city in Europe with sprawling leafy suburbs spreading out for miles. The housing density is extremely low and people pretty much refuse point blank to live in apartments or townhouses. The city itself has extremely high property prices which have made things worse by driving people further and further out. So you now have people living in a town 50-60miles from Dublin and working in the city centre!

The result:

* People are so spread out that the public transport infrastructure can't possibily serve them
* 3 car families as it's impossible to get shopping, kids to school, to/from college etc without a car.
* an increasingly shopping-mall oriented car-focused US-style society and a city centre that is just not somewhere people live anymore. You go into the city to work in financial services, go night clubbing or do various leisure activities only. It's like somewhere you visit rather tha live in.
* Oh and it's causing massive traffic jams which are causing us to be even further off our kyoto protocall targets

It'll be interesting to see what sollutions we can come up with. There is a drive (tax incentivised) to repopulate the city centre area with appartments which is partially working. It's a most un-European city though.

The other trend is that businesses are starting to move into the rapidly devloping towns around Dublin.. so for some people it's meant the entire life now takes place in a smaller town outside the city!

There are advantages.. bigger houses, lots of space, arguably nicer lifestyle (unless you're commuting)

But I think long-term it's not very sustanable.

Here in Vienna the tramway system is a very important everyday transportation for locals. Tourists use it, but it isn't by any menas a tourist attraction. Students use it for going to school or university, people use it to go to work, seniors take the tram to their coffee table,...
Some people love the trams (like me), others hate them but none of us can really live without them. After WWII there were severe efforts to get rid of all public transportation in favor of cars, several tramway lines were converted to bus lines (something most people who live near those lines still rant about, buses are far noisier than trams and create lots of soot), but fortunately in Austria everything takes longer than in other countries, so by the time others realized the value of public transportation the largest part of our tram system was still up and running. Personally I'd love to see more of the lovely old museum cars in service, like for example in Amsterdam. Those old beasts with open doors and wooden interior were way cool.

We did the complete opposite..

Back in the 1930s we established CIE, a nationalised public transport athority to run all Bus, Rail and some other systems too. It bought-out all the private operators usually to shut them down a few months later for "economic reasons".

At the time Ireland had very extensive railways including a lot of rural narrow gauge systems which should have been upgraded and preserved (in my opinion)

We closed many hundreds of miles of railways, ripped up all the city tram systems, closed suburban rail lines in Dublin and Cork. Closed all lines that were not radial from Dublin meaning that it suddenly became impossible to get a train directly between any of the provincial towns or cities. Leaving about 1200 miles of lines open today.

A very unenlightened transport policy!

Northern Ireland's attitude to rail was even more unimaginative. The long since abolished, UTA (Ulster Transport Athority) in a simlar way to CIE closed pretty much everything except 2 mainlines in Northern Ireland i.e. Belfast - Londonderry/Derry and Belfast - Dublin. Leaving only 342KM of track today!

Rail's making a comeback though.. Irish rail's getting quite a lot of money to improve services. We should see new a new Cork - Dublin intercity fleet late this year or early 2005. Older rolling stock is being phased out meaning nothing should be older than late 1970s (BREL Mk III trains)... there were some real old crocks complete with steam brakes! (although diesel hauled) operating some of the not-so-heavily-used services until recently! All being replaced by modern Mitsui diesel-hydrolic railcars..

The old ones were nice though, big cushy seats and very effective steam heating And due to the lack of automatic doors required a guard to blow a real whistle They smelt like a museum on-board.. kinda slightly musty.. and it was a bit like stepping back into the Victorian era ... I think they're called "Cravens"

Any in the UK know ?

Irish Rail fleet: Irish Rail Fleet

----

I think it would make a LOT of economic sense to electrify the entire rail network here and start operating some more ecologically friendly services.

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 12-31-2003).]

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 12-31-2003).]

Back on the subject of Vienna trams, my parents and I some years back visited Austria and spend a day in Vienna. Being rail nuts, we took the obligatory ride on a tram. Living as I was at the time in South Africa and having some knowledge of Afrikaans (a kind of Germanic language) was tasked with using my best German (which is awful!) to buy the tickets. The ticket seller having listened to my best impression of the correct way to purchase three tickets in German, smiled and in impeccable English asked me were I wanted to travel to, sold me the tickets and bid me Good Day! I was very impressed as I doubt any driver/ticket seller on the Blackpool system would know a word of German.

The old man has his video camera constantly running on these sort of trips and videos the whole tram ride – interior passengers and all. Shortly after that trip, the new James Bond film starring Timothy Dalton was released (‘The Living Daylights’?) in part of which he is supposed to be traveling on a tram in Bratislava or somewhere. We realized that all this footage was shot on a Vienna tram identical to the one we had traveled on. During editing of the holiday video a two second clip of James Bond’s tram ride was inserted into that part of the journey. It’s over before most people notice it but it’s amusing to hear people say “Hey that was James Bond/Timothy Dalton!?”. “Did you realize he was on board with you?”.

The name of Dr. Beeching is well-known in Britain. He's regarded as the government official most responsible for the decimation of our rail network in the 1960s. Many small branch lines were closed down, leaving a lot of rural communities with no public transport, a situation which still exists today.

You can see remnants of stations and rights-of-way in places, along with a little irony at times. One town near to where I lived some years ago had a road named Beechings Way. No prizes for guessing that the railway once passed through there.

It's Lancashire -- They can barely speak English!

Na then Paul lad! Tha's tawkin bout were I were braut up. Nowt rong wi that!

{trans}

Steady-on Paul my good fellow. You are discussing where I was raised. Nothing wrong with the place!

[This message has been edited by Hutch (edited 01-03-2004).]