New Orleans Street Cars

Electric streetcar service in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA has a long and proud history. The St. Charles streetcar line is said to be the oldest continuously operating street railway system in the world (service was interrupted for a while during the inundation of much of New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina in 2005).

As buses (and in some cities, but not New Orleans, trolley buses) displaced electric streetcar systems in most of the US, preservationists were able to have the St. Charles line kept in service. It was for a while the sole surviving streetcar line in New Orleans.

In 1988, the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) established a new streetcar line running along the riverfront of the Mississippi River (the Riverfront line). In 2004, the Canal Street streetcar line was revived,

Here we see a car of the St. Charles line sporting its traditional olive green livery. It is westbound on St. Charles Street (it becomes St. Charles Avenue as it heads into the suburbs), about to cross Natchez Street.


Most of the St. Charles cars themselves survived the Katrina inundation. Many of the newer cars on the other lines, stored in a different area, were destroyed and had to be replaced.

The Riverfront line runs in a right of way adjacent to the Mississippi River floodwall also accommodating one railway track (used mostly only at night).

Here we see two ladies from the International Convention of the Red Hat Society boarding an upriver (northbound) Riverfront car at the Poydras Street stop (near the Hilton New Orleans Riverside Hotel).


This is one of the new cars acquired after the Katrina inundation.

The clerestory (pronounced "clear story") roof (with the simulated windows) is wholly bogus - an attempt to call up older car design (ugh!). But it hides the air conditioning unit. The actual roofs of that type were intended to admit more light into the cars.

The reference to "krewe"/"krewes" on the advertising placard for a cruise line is a pun on krewe, the name for the traditional societies that sponsor floats and parties in the annual New Orleans Mardi Gras celebration ("Carnival").

Here we see a car at the "downriver" terminus of the Canal Street line. The motorman shows some of the fabled N'awlins hospitality to a passenger, an attendee at the Red Hat convention:


To the right we see the what I think may be an apprentice conductor.

The track gauge of all the New Orleans streetcar lines is 5 ft 2-1/2 inches (1588 mm). This is 6 inches wider than standard railway gauge (4 ft 8-1/2 inches, 1435 mm). This is in fact a fairly common street railway gauge. Folklore has it that the use of gauges differing from standard railway gauge was in part a protection against a potential lust by railway operators to take over street railway companies to use their trackage to extend rail lines into city industrial areas.

Best regards,

Doug

Doug, Your narration adds so much more to the enjoyment.

One of my fav places to visit in the US.

Thanks for sharing.

Here's a view of the roof of a 2000-series New Orleans streetcar:


We see the fake clerestory ceiling and the air conditioning unit it conceals.

On the matter of the rail gauge, here we see a railroad track on the left and a New Orleans streetcar track (Riverfront line) on the right. The 6-inch difference in gauge is visible (the streetcar line, on the right, having the larger gauge).


Best regards,

Doug

Here we see a Canal Street streetcar at the "downriver" end of its route, preparing to head back upriver (without actually turning around). The motorman is raising the trolley pole ("kite") that will be to the rear as the car heads out, and will then lower the one that will now be in the front.

There is a full set of driving controls at each end of the car. The motorman's key is used to activate one set or the other. (In older cars, it was the reversing lever for the motor controller that was detached, in the neutral position, from one end and placed at the other end so the car could be controlled from there. Sometimes the brake control handle was also taken to the other end.)


The motorman is moving the pole with its retriever rope, which is managed with a device called a trolley retriever. I tonight I would talk a little about trolley retrievers.

Here we see the retriever on car 2008:


The retriever rope is wound on a drum in the retriever, equipped with a flat coil spring. The spring applies enough tension to keep the rope taut so it does not "flop around" but not anywhere near enough tension to pull the trolley pole down against the springs that raise it to put the "shoe" into contact with the trolley wire.

In the retriever there is a second drum with a much more powerful coiled flat spring. This drum is normally "fully wound up", and a pawl holds it in that state.

Suppose that the trolley shoe somehow jumps off the trolley wire (a "dewire"). The trolley pole rapidly moves up under the force of its raising springs, pulling the rope and rapidly turning the drum in the retriever.

A centrifugal weight on the rope drum moves outward and engages the pawl on the second drum. This links the two drums together, and disengages the pawl from the fixed frame of the retriever, allowing the second drum to rotate under the influence of its powerful spring. This turns the first drum, hauling in the rope, pulling the pole down before it can get entangled in the trolley wire supporting arrangements.

Then the, with the pole hooked down, the motorman rewinds the big spring by pulling the retriever rope, the system now being in a special state for this operation. When the spring is fully rewound, he pushes the plunger seen on the upper right of the retriever housing to reset the system to its normal operating state, lets the rope wind back into the retriever, and then uses the rope to unhook the pole and let it up until the shoe is back on the wire..

Very clever (invented about 1905, mostly by Knutsen).

Best regards,

Doug

This is a great topic, Doug. San Francisco for sure, I'll dig them up! Maybe some from Europe too.

Asher

New Orleans streetcars use a fairly rare arrangement: a secondary retriever rope.

We can see it here, running from the main retriever rope a bit below the top to a ring on the trolley pole a bit back from the shoe. We see it here:


Here's its purpose. When a trolley dewires with the car under full power, a long and quite hot arc is drawn. Since the pole is rising, this arc may in fact cross the retriever rope, burning it in two. This is just the time we really need the retriever to work properly and pull the pole out of harm's way.

The secondary retriever rope provides redundancy so the retriever can do so.

We see here the detail of the scheme used in New Orleans to attach the secondary retriever rope.


A loop is made in the main retriever rope and knotted. The secondary rope has a knot at each end. The top end is tied to the ring on the pole with a simple knot; the knot at its end prevents that knot from slipping. A loop knot is made at the tip of the loop of the main rope and goes around bottom end of the secondary rope; the knot there keeps the secondary rope from slipping out.

This makes it easy to replace the secondary rope if it should be damaged. The motorman we saw in the picture above told me that sometimes in a dewire the arc will burn through the secondary rope instead of the main rope (a better result, in fact). He said when that happens they are obligated to report this immediately to Engineering so that the car can be brought to the shop for replacing the secondary rope.

He by the way had not known what the secondary rope was for (he was about to retire)! But he knew it was very important!

Best regards,

Doug