Trolleys - but without a trolley [DotD - 21.3.2020]

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Pictures from Lisa and my trip to the USA - "trolleys" taking tourists around various places. These are Bar Harbour (Maine), Portland (Maine) and Newport (Rhode Island).  To me the look like fancy buses as I think of a trolley [bus] as a vehicle running on tyres and picking up power from an overhead line.







Would YOU call these vehicles "trollies"?  If not, what should they be called?

[Oxonhutch]

Trolley is the US term for what we call a tram - i.e. they are meant to resemble a tram outline. What we call trolley buses, they call trackless trolleys.

[martyjon]

Trolley is the US term for what we call a tram - i.e. they are meant to resemble a tram outline. What we call trolley buses, they call trackless trolleys.

I thought a true tram, you know those thingys that run through streets on rails, were in the US called streetcars.

[stuving]

Trolley is the US term for what we call a tram - i.e. they are meant to resemble a tram outline. What we call trolley buses, they call trackless trolleys.

The names for these vehicles tended to be local, and usage evolved with time too. After all, in Ipswich the locals called their trolley buses trams. In the USA, streetcar become the standard term rather than tram when they were horse- (or cable-)drawn. So with overhead electrification they became electric trolley cars - trolley referring to the pulley on the wire or its housing. In meaning, trolley, bogie, truck, pulley, and lots of other words all overlap to mean "smallish wheel or thing with wheels".

In New York and other cities the name was shortened to trolley-car, and no ambiguity arises if there are no trolley buses. It's a bit ironic that the name is now generally being applied over there to diesel buses that look a bit old fashioned, and with a huge stretch of the imagination look a little bit like a streetcar. But in a city that had streetcars until the 1950s, and called them trolleys, that name is likely to be adapted label new things - even if it makes no sense to outsiders.

[Bmblbzzz]

After all, in Ipswich the locals called their trolley buses trams.

What's normal for Norfolk isn't always standard for Suffolk.