Car noise?

[Steve Walker]

Until too many people are being run over and it is decided that a standard type of sound is needed.

SteveW

[bert]

In article , T i m writes

Well there are moves afoot in the EU notably from Italy to prevent this sort of thing. So we'd better get out asap.

[Marland]

Try telling Dionne Warwick that.

GH

[Terry Casey]

That would be Darwinism in practice.

Anybody who doesn't take care crossing the road dserves everything they get - unlike the drivers who have to live with the consequences.

And, in places where there aren't convenient crossings with audible signals for the blind, I've never seen anybody blind wanting to cross the road short of volunteers to help them.

[T i m]

Quite..

Or cyclists. Except they aren't quite big enough to guarantee coming off best every time.

I think there is going to have to be an app that gives those living their lives though their phones an audio - visual warning that they are about to walk into a road and there are others using it who may move equally quietly.

Cheers, T i m

[Terry Casey]

Could that be because she is used to traffic driving on the right and looked the wrong way?

As the article says she was chuckling while she was being traeated, is it possible that she was laughing at her own stupidity?

[Marland]

Quite likely ,

but the Trolleybuses were known as the silent killers or the silent death in some of the towns they operated, a moniker they may have acquired as they were very much quieter than the worn out Edwardian trams they replaced that were fairly noisy . The IC engines of the 1930?s when that took place were fairly noisy and there was still heck a lot of horse drawn stuff around and shod hooves on a metalled road are also fairly audible. The quietness of the trolleys came as a surprise to many and for some fatal.

Oh and very few trolleybuses after the initial experimental ones had trolley wheels like trams did, They had skates fitted with carbon inserts so were quieter than trolleywheels.

GH

Or the accent of the Glasgow Nurses, she probably hadn?t a clue what they were saying .

GH

[Terry Casey]

I you ever have the chance, visit the Trolleybus Museum at Sandtoft [1] or the Carlton Colville Transport Museum on an operating day.

You will be surprised at the advance warning that the overhead wires carry because there is a distinct load 'clack' every time the trolley poles pass one of the suspension wires, temporarily raising the wires then dropping them again.

For even more noise, stand near a section gap or pointwork in the overhead.

After your visit, do come back and tell us how 'silent' trolleybuses really are ...

[1] Sandtoft for preference as it has a more complex system, better illustrating condotions on a public system.

[T i m]

No wonder you are so confused about how the EU works Berk, You know all the member states discuss these things and have to generally agree on it?

Cheers, T i m

[Marland]

I?ve been to both and am old enough to have ridden on them in normal service, Plus the short route at the Black Country Museum . I have also frequently talked to the wife?s elderly cousin who was a conductress on the Bournemouth ones about her experiences of them.

Admirable as they are the museum routes are not fully representative of how routes were in normal service as they have a larger proportion of switches and crossings in the overhead in their compressed areas than a normal route had , get away from large interchanges like Hammersmith Broadway or Bournemouth Square there would be long sections of plain wire where the only interruption in the smooth passage of the skates would be the section breaks installed at intervals to enable a length of overhead to be electrically isolated from adjacent ones. Between those on plain wire for a of a mile or so there would be no reason for anything to induce the passing skates to click and in that mile or so there would be many people crossing the road. Also by necessity the museum lines are using overhead components that are decades old and recovered from closed systems and worn from years of previous service. If they are clicking under plain hangers then the wire must be worn, It isn?t a plain round wire, it has a couple grooves formed in it that the support ironmongery pinches into near the top allowing unhindered passage of the skates underneath.

And you cannot deny that the some of the population who were around when they replaced trams came up with the name the Silent Killers in some places, that?s their words not mine.

Incidentally have you come across one of the last component catalogues from Ohio Brass that is online

A lot of systems used their products, others used the very similar parts from BICC which meant a lot of clutter and visual intrusion, Bournemouth Square had about 30 tons of metal in the air. Modern systems abroad use much lighter components from Swiss and German suppliers.

GH