Technical Standards
Vehicle Standard
The APTA Heritage Trolley Subcommittee's first major project in the area of
technical standards was to create standards for vehicles to be used on
heritage trolley and streetcar lines. Task Force member John Smatlak lead this effort.
The standard applies both to newly constructed cars and restored older cars
which are to be operated on a heritage trolley line. The Task Force's document
was formally released by APTA on June 20, 2005. Follow the
link below to APTA's web site for more information on this standard:
This standard and the process the subcommittee's used to create the
standard were reviewed in formal sessions at the APTA Rail Conference in
Pittsburgh in June 2005. The following links lead to the Powerpoint presentation and a
related paper used at the conference:
Track and Overhead Wire Standards
The Subcommittee agreed that the next area of standards development will be
track and overhead wire infrastructure. A first step is defining the goals of the Subcommittee's standards given the numeours infrastructure standards setting efforts underway in other transit and engineering groups. Follow this link to a draft document designed to capture the Subcommittee's goals formatted as the introduction for the future standards document.
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Technical Reference
During the heyday of first generation electric trolley systems in America, a
comprehensive handbook covering virtually every technical aspect of street
railways was compiled by Albert S. Richey, a professor at the Worcester (MA)
Polytechnic Institute. This work has long been considered the touchstone
reference document of the field and is highly relevant to present day heritage
streetcar and modern streetcar lines. In 1989 the Association of Railway Museums
republished the book as a reference for museums preserving street railway
equipment. They subsequently converted the book to PDF format. Click on the
below link to see this work but be prepared for a significant download time as
the file is approximately 27 megabytes in size:
Presentations from Tampa Meeting - December 2007
The following presentations were presented to the subcommittee during its meeting in Tampa:
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