Talk:Tram engine

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Tram engine vs. steam tram[edit]

Tram engine describes various kinds of tram engines, steam powered ones as well as electrical ones. Truely there were also tram engines with internal combustion.

Those links, which I had blanked, describe steam trams. From that article they are linked.--Ulamm (talk) 10:07, 4 December 2012 (UTC)+Ulamm (talk) 10:10, 4 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The purpose of these interwiki links is for navigation, not definition. Ontology is hard, we know that nav links can't achieve it unambiguously — but we don't care, that's not their function. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:41, 4 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Speed limits[edit]

Were they really governed to such low speeds, or has someone misread some poorly written municipal regulations and/or written mph as km/h instead? 16k is sort of believable, particularly if it had some longer runs, but 12k is pretty slow and might not average too much more than walking speed if it faced a lot of stops, traffic, or steeper inclines. Plus no British regulation would have been specified in kilometres at the time.

Even modern UK trams (whose limits ARE, curiously, given in km/h), which are both quieter but also much larger and heavier with wider sweeps on corners, tend to have a healthy 15k limit in wholly pedestrian areas (sometimes 10 at stops), and progressively higher ones through mixed traffic streets with lots of pedestrians (20-30k), urban through-roads or quieter back streets (30-45k) and then faster arterials or segregated track (50...80k).

Additionally, would this even have applied to electric trams? I live in a city which once had an extensive tram network running from overhead power lines, and a trip in or out of the centre from/to the far end of the longer branches would have taken more than an hour of very leisurely cruising at 7.5mph, even without stops. Little wonder they ended up being replaced by buses (the earliest models being, at least legally speaking, limited to 12mph/20kmh, then later 20mph/32kmh whilst still in competition with trams - still slow vs "proper" commuter train lines that often covered similar distances but at upto 60mph/96kmh peak and easily averaging half that) when even cycling, or just running, would have been quicker. When there was no other alternative except horse trams that may have kept a similar pace at a comfortable trot for long distance, or more expensive hansom cabs (still not allowed to gallop in town...) it probably would have been attractive, but certainly not competitive against anything even slightly more modern or heavily built. 209.93.141.17 (talk) 14:03, 15 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]