Trains, Street Cars, Trolleys?

Question

What are the differences between these 3 modes of transportation? One of my co-workers says that they are all trains because they run on rails.

Answer 1

The chief difference is weight and speed, as well as propulsion methods as mentioned above..

San Francisco has cable cars..  The trolleys use a moving underground cable to pull it around the tracks.

Other cities had electric trolleys, and those are propelled through an overhead wire and trolley pole.

Cable cars and trolleys are all lightweight, and usually run as single cars down the street on light rail embedded in the street surface.  Because they are lightweight, they are easy to get moving and to stop, which is important because they share road with cars, buses and pedestrians.  These are considered "light rail mass transportation systems."

Trains on the other hand usually run in consists of multiple cars all coupled together, and are usually heavyweight and travel at higher top speeds, and need lots of room to accelerate and come to a stop, which means they don't share roads with cars, buses and pedestrians very well.

They can have a locomotive to pull or push unpowered cars, or they can be EMUs (each passenger car has electrical pickup and motors), and the electrical ones draw power either through a third rail or overhead high-speed catenary.  They need to be heavily built to satisfy far more demanding collision safety regulations than trolleys.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Trains run on tracks that are not on a car roadway . Trolleys and Streetcars run down the middle of a street and operate by wires connected to the top from electric poles , I think they have those in San Francisco .

Answer 3

Just because something runs on a railroad track does not automatically make it a "train".  The definition of a train as described by Webster's revised dictionary:

Train:  A consecution or succession of connected things.

Since most trolleys and streetcars run as single units they cannot be called trains due to the violation of the definition.

The differences between a trolley and a street car are minimal as they are pretty much the same and perform the same basic service.

Trains fall into two basic categories:  freight or passenger.  There are also 3 types of freight trains:  Local, Regular, and Intermodal.  

Local freight trains service the industries that are local to their home terminal.  The other freight trains can be categorized into 2 groups, they are either "thru" or "terminated".  The THRU freights are exaclty that, they go thru and keep on going until they reach their final destination, stopping along the way for crew changes and side-tracked to allow other trains with priority to pass where double tracks do not exist.

Another sub-category of a THRU or Terminated train is the Intermodal train.  Intermodal trains get the same priority and are allowed to travel at the same high speeds as passenger trains.

Intermodal trains can be made up of TOFC (trailer on flat car, also called piggyback service), COFC (container on flat car, either single or double stacked), automobile racks, and there may be others.  On the Soo Line we were able to run our intermodal trains at 79 MPH, the maximum allowable speed limit on our route from St. Paul, MN to Chicago.

There are other trains of non-revenue service that maintain the right of way, replace jointed rail with welded rail, perform track inspections, clean up derailments, etc.

Someone mentioned that regular trains do not use tracks that go down the middle of streets that automobiles use, this is not quite true.  Just 5 miles north of me is Clearwater, Florida and the freight train tracks go right down the middle of the street.  The Milwaukee Road also had tracks in Kentucky that also ran down the middle of some streets.  Granted, these trains are not allowed to travel very fast and this situation is a rarity, but I do have pictures to prove it.  What he probably meant was that trolleys do not use the same right of way as regular trains and vice-versa, which is basically true.