[GTALUG] mysterious restarts

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 01:12:45PM -0400, Russell Reiter via talk wrote:
> Well he did say voltage but perhaps he was referring to when the old fleet
> is entirely retired. For now they might be modifying the older still
> serviceable cars to deal with higher voltage in some way.

There is no way to are changing the voltage.  Just the current carrying
capacity of the overhead wires.

If increasing the voltage was an option (which would require
simultaniously changing every transformer in the system, and probably the
motors in every streetcar too at the same time), then they would be able
to keep the old wires since higher voltage reduces the need for higher
current to provide the same power.  Of course swapping all that out at
once is not an option, so the voltage is not changing.  So instead if you
want more power capacity, you need more current which means thicker wires.
Conviniently that can be done area by area.

The wires are of course also being updated to work with the pantograph
system, which means fixing all the intersections and curves, and
eventually making the straight sections move side to side a bit rather
than being completely straight (which apparently wears a nice groove
into pantographs).  After all the plan apparently is that only the first
60 or so of the new streetcars will have trolley poles, while the rest
will only have a pantograph (the first 60 have both).

-- 
Len Sorensen