Tram

A tram (also known as tramcar; and in North America known as streetcar, trolley or trolley car) is a rail vehicle which runs on tracks along public urban streets (called street running), and also sometimes on a segregated right of way. The lines or networks operated by tramcars are called tramways. Tramways powered by electricity, the most common type historically, were once called electric street railways. However, trams were widely used in urban areas before the universal adoption of electrification; other methods of powering trams are listed below under "History".

Tram lines may also run between cities and/or towns (for example, interurbans, tram-train), and/or partially grade-separated even in the cities (light rail). Very occasionally, trams also carry freight. Tram vehicles are usually lighter and shorter than conventional trains and rapid transit trains, but the size of trams (particularly light rail vehicles) is rapidly increasing. Some trams (for instance tram-trains) may also run on ordinary railway tracks, a tramway may be upgraded to a light rail or a rapid transit line, two urban tramways may be connected to an interurban, etc. For all these reasons, the differences between the various modes of rail transportation are often indistinct. In the United States, the term tram has sometimes been used for rubber-tired trackless trains, which are not related to the other vehicles covered in this article.

Tramcar (Wildwood)

The Tramcar is a trackless train service running on the Boardwalk in the Cape May County, New Jersey communities of Wildwood and North Wildwood. The service, which began on June 11, 1949, takes passengers along the two-mile long Wildwood boardwalk. Service is available at all points along the boardwalk, from the beginning at Cresse Avenue to the end at 16th Avenue in North Wildwood.

Description

The Tramcar is colored yellow and blue, though sometimes contains other colors due to advertisements. It is well known for the phrase "Watch the tramcar, please," a pre-recorded alert voiced by local Floss Stingel in 1971 to clear the tramcar's path. The tramcar fare is $3.00. At a haunted house ride at one of the piers, there is an old tramcar at the side of the track that has a skeleton in it that says, "Watch the tramcar, please!!", as a parody of the boardwalk tramcar alert.

Operating hours are 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. The Tramcar started running five years after the boardwalk was made. The original fare was 10 cents one way. A round-trip tram-car ride takes approximately 1 hour. Each tram car runs on a 36 DC-volt battery that weighs more than 2,000 pounds. The batteries are charged each night and can run for about seven or eight hours at a time. Several of the tram cars running on the Boardwalk are the same ones that were built for the 1939 World's Fair in New York City. The tram cars carry about half a million people up and down the Boardwalk each year. From 1998 to 2000, Wildwood hosted the annual Great Tram Car Race between entertainers Al Alberts and Cozy Morle.