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Along with the terrifically bad pavement, which is loose and
wearing away further under the pounding of daily traffic, are rusty
rails of sorts. They are most often seen in pairs, as at this
exposure at 111th Street, but where the wearing away is more complete,
we see all three of them.
The streetcars of Manhattan (with a very few exceptions far uptown)
were not trolley cars. In two US cities, Manhattan and
Washington DC, local ordinances prohibited overhead wires, and so the
power wire had to be taken underground, into a conduit.
The usual analogy was to a trolley wire under the car instead of
over. It's also the same idea as Lionel O-gauge toy trains, except
that their low-powered center rail does not need to be hidden from
accidental touch. And it's the same as the subway's third rail along
one side of the track. In the conduit system, there were a pair of T
shaped rails with the "tops" facing each other: -| |- , charged at the
usual trolley power of 500 to 600 volts of direct current, and
contacted by a sliding collector called a plough that extended down
from the car.
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