Double trolley wire (was: Johnstown PCC Scans & a Pittsburgh Fantasy

[Don Galt]

>> Cincinnati was a bit weird anyway.  They didn't know how many wires to
stick overhead and while they got the correct number of trolley poles on
the cars (2), they stuck them both at one end! <<

This is wandering way outside Pennsylvania, of course. Go ahead, slap me.

In addition to well-known Havana, I know of at least one other system to
employ double overhead. The Seattle Municipal Street Railway, which started
out with one new line and one gift line which it rehabilitated, in the days
when the main network was still in the hands of Stone & Webster, used
double wires for its "A" division. This configuration lasted only for a few
years and didn't survive past the city's purchase of the Seattle Electric
(S&W) system.

Cincinnati Street Railways at one time actually had cars with four (count
'em, 4) trolley poles, taken over when the Millcreek Valley lines were
absorbed. These double-ended cars were of no particular use on CSR, which
universally used loops and single-enders. The Millcreek Valley lines were
an early example of that Cinti phenomenon, the suburban/interurban line
which raised an otherwise unused pole the moment it entered the city
limits. For that matter, CSR's own cars dropped the second pole when they
crossed the boundary on the way to Lockland or Sedamsville.

D2