[PRCo] Salt Lake City TRAX

[Kenneth Josephson]

Hi All,

I know this is off topic for the Western Pennsylvania & Milwaukee lists,
but I've included it as a "must see" and a definite "must ride" for any
traction fan.

Just returned from a trip to Utah for a family wedding. I managed to
squeeze a day or so of rail fanning. Visited the Heber Valley Railroad
and saw Salt Lake & Ogden interurban car 403 and a Salt Lake Garfield &
Western open interurban trailer. There is just one trailer from this
line, Charlie. The volunteers I spoke to do not know who wound up with
their second SG&W trailer.

Rode the TRAX light rail line from Sandy into Salt Lake City. The cars
are clean, fast and make no apologies for their existence (i.e., they
race through all grade crossings at speed, no slowing down to tempt
motorists.) Since we Mormons are usually a bit nerdly, we seldom
challenge trains or drive around grade crossings to impress women or to
assert our manhood.;-) Since Charlie and I are probably the only Mormons
on these lists, have a laugh at our expense and please don't get all
stuffy about my little attempt at a joke!

Seriously, no horns at crossings.....just a continuous ringing of the
gong. The line parallels Interstate Highway 15 on the east, but is
several blocks away and can't be seen from the highway, other than the
shop access trackage.

The cars have ***very annoying*** beeping alarms to warn when the doors
are ready to close. The cars "nose" a bit over 50 mph.

When we hit street running, it was like a combination of Milwaukee's old
Route 12 running on West Wisconsin Avenue in front of the Main Library
and New Orleans' St. Charles line. The line poles (traction poles for
our Canadian & overseas friends) stand on a grassy, well landscaped
median with the tracks in the left lanes of the street. Catenary gives
way to single, simple trolley wire for street running, a lesson Buffalo,
New York should learn.The grassy median gives way to paving blocks as
Downtown is approached. The cars sound their gongs continuously on
street turns. Street boarding is mostly at median stations utilizing the
cars' left hand doors.

The cars themselves are clean, have a Pittsburgh style roof spotlight
and mini snow plows which look like little pilots. These features are
somewhat reminiscent of Pittsburgh's 1600 & 1700 series interurban PCCs
(this made me suspect Harold had a hand somewhere in car
specifications.) :-) If they have horns, I never heard any sounded. The
sandboxes are under the end seats and have a vertical "sight glass" to
show how full they are.

The downtown line (traction) poles are designed to look like some of the
originals from Salt Lake City's first traction era. Ironically, within a
block of the new line on South Temple, are four Bates poles now doing
duty as street light standards and two tubular line poles with their
feeder cable brackets and insulators intact! I was told that section of
South Temple will eventually receive a heritage streetcar line and these
vintage line poles may be returned to their original function of
supporting trolley wire.

We didn't get to ride the branch line to the university, but we did note
that Sandy trains usually had two cars and University trains were
usually single car trains.

Teenagers, transients, and other interesting characters packed our
trains in the Downtown "free fare" zone. They all jumped ship as soon as
we reached the "proof of payment" section south of the city center. Our
inbound train was boarded by two friendly, very professional looking
uniformed Public Safety Officers. They checked for fare evaders and
chatted briefly with some of teh regular riders. These officers are
armed, but I didn't find out if they are actual police officers or armed
security.

The stations have electronic signs indicating time and temperature and
train information. Public service announcements are played on the trains
in a soothing female voice.

Finally, we saw one motorman wearing a traditional striped engineer's
hat....he may have been a railfan.

I'm sure I overlooked something. Pittsburgh and Milwaukee list members
can e-mail me privately with comments and questions.

K.