The Family History thread gave me the idea for this thread? My grandmother has a picture with her grandfather My Great Great Grandfather around the turn of the century. (plus or minus a few years) The name on the horse less carriage is:
"FORT SMITH LIGHT & TRACTION COMPANY"
Yes, Arkansas.
Now the question.
Can anyone explain Traction...

http://www.efortsmith.com/electricpark.htm

Traction:

http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=traction

You know Joe, I have not done a search on the topic for about 5 years. I guess I should have done so first. Thanks for the Fort Smith Link.
Still doing research on this so any other links are helpfull.
Thanks, Wirewiz

[This message has been edited by wirewiz (edited 08-12-2002).]

hey Wiz,
From a railroad perspective, a traction company was usually the local trolley company. Sometimes since they needed electricity to run the trolley's they also supplied the electricity to the homes too. Some were DC, some AC. If it was around the turn of the century, they standard had pretty well settled out to AC.
Cool stuff.

Trainwire

Steve,

I see you are by Strassburg, If you go into the train musem there I believe there is a wall of members. ( Or something like that.) It has been awile since I was there. Anyway, my dad's name is on that wall. Even though that wall honored mostly Penn-Central railroaders, my dad worked for the Erie Lacawanna. Do you know the big rivalry between the Penn-Central (P.C.) and the Erie-Lackawanna (EL) with their electric trains?

Caper

Mornin' Harold.
sorry, I only get to check the site if I get to work early.

The E-L was a good railroad in it's own right and the rivalry between them and the Pennsy was well known. My own grandfather worked for the PRR. His name is up there too. I have pictures to post one of these days of him at his post. He worked for the "power masters" office. He made sure that there was enough juice for the trains. I'll get around to posting them one of these days.

Trainwire AKA Steve

Steve,

Did you hear the rivarly between the EL and Penn with the type of voltages for their electric lines? The EL went with Tom Edidon with the DC voltage and the Penn went with George Westinghouse with the AC voltage. This is what I was led to believe.
My dad started out as a ticket agent then went to work on the baggage cars, dining cars, office courier, billing agent, then up to accounting, finally back to working with the conductors at the very end. That was when the EL moved everything from Hoboken to Philly.

Harold