Why do they call it a tram?

If you've been on a streetcar in San Francisco or a trolley in Philadelphia, you've ridden a tram. The word tram was originally a Scottish term for the wagons that are used in coal mines, stemming from a Middle Flemish word meaning rung or handle of a barrow.



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: a carrier that travels on an overhead cable or rails. b. chiefly British : streetcar.

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Origin of tram 2. First recorded in 1880–85; short for trammel.

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A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in USA) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way.

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Tram vehicles are usually lighter and shorter than main line and rapid transit trains. Today, most trams use electrical power, usually fed by a pantograph sliding on an overhead line; older systems may use a trolley pole or a bow collector. In some cases, a contact shoe on a third rail is used.

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I think the main difference between a tram and a train is that a train (heavy rail) has a dedicated locomotive that carries no passengers or freight (besides the operator) but tows unpowered passenger or freight cars, while a tram has just one or two powered passenger cars with an operator's cabin at each end.

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Conventional electric trams are operated in street running and on reserved track for most of their route. However, on one steep segment of track, they are assisted by cable tractors, which push the trams uphill and act as brakes for the downhill run.

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The world's first experimental electric tramway was built by Ukrainian inventor Fyodor Pirotsky near St Petersburg, Russian Empire, in 1875. The first commercially successful electric tram line operated in Lichterfelde near Berlin, Germany, in 1881. It was built by Werner von Siemens (see Berlin Straßenbahn).

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Edinburgh Trams is a tramway in Edinburgh, Scotland, operated by Edinburgh Trams Ltd. It is a 18.5-kilometre (11.5 mi) line between Newhaven in Leith and Edinburgh Airport, with 23 stops.

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The word tram was originally a Scottish term for the wagons that are used in coal mines, stemming from a Middle Flemish word meaning rung or handle of a barrow.

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(br?li ) Word forms: plural brollies. countable noun. A brolly is the same as an umbrella. [British, informal]

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An extensive tram network covered large parts of London for several decades during the first half of the twentieth century. By the 1950s, however, trams were seen as old fashioned and were gradually phased out to create more room for buses and cars.

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Tram substations contain electrical equipment to convert the local power supply into the voltage needed to run the tram network. Power going into the substation comes from the existing local power lines in the street.

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