Quote:
Originally Posted by Drybrain
Indeed, Toronto's streetcars get bunged up by all sorts of problems, from traffic to broken wires to mechanical failures, but snow rarely seems to be a problem. (Cold can be a problem, because there's some sort of hydraulic braking system that gets frozen up, but that seems to be an issue due to the age of the streetcar fleet. The newer ones the city is getting don't have that problem.)
The Alberta LRT systems, which operate mostly outdoors in a harsher climate, seem to do fine in snowy conditions as well.
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Thanks Drybrain, I missed your post the first time around. I was wondering mostly about hills, after seeing some buses get stuck on Halifax's hills in the last 2 snowstorms. When looking at the old trolley photos I noticed them going up some pretty severe grades (like Jacob St., which no longer exists) and naturally I wondered with steel wheels on steel rails, if there would be a traction problem. Nothing that I read about the old trolleys indicated that they typically would get stuck in the snow.
An article I read yesterday also noted that snowbanks can cause a problem as sometimes cars park further out due to the banks, effectively blocking the streetcars, so they have to be fairly vigilant about towing them away to prevent blockage since the streetcars can't simply steer around the cars like buses.