What is the technical difference between a light-rail train and an Amtrak train?

JonMyrlennBailey

Active member
To some people, if it runs on rails, it's simply a train. Is a streetcar technically a "train"? How about a San Francisco cable car? I've seen some vehicles dubbed "trains" that don't even run on rails.

Take, for instance, the Elephant Train at the zoo in San Francisco.


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Light rail is a term that comes from the UK Light Railways Act 1896. This was an attempt to keep costs down for some railways. Speeds were limited to 25 mph. Since then it has come to mean different things in different countries.

Cheerio John
 
As John states, the terms "light" and "heavy" rail can have different meanings according to where they are used.

Here in Sydney a former "heavy rail" freight line has been converted to a "light rail" for commuter traffic and another former "heavy rail" commuter line is currently undergoing the same conversion.

To most people the difference is that "heavy rail" takes larger, heavier and usually faster "trains" while "light rail" takes smaller (i.e. usually shorter), lighter and (often) slower "trams". "Trams" are usually built lower with no steps for easy access by passengers. "Trains" are usually built higher and need platforms or steps for passenger access.

Other differences are that "light rail" often runs on streets with normal road traffic (but there are places where "heavy rail" trains do the same) and that "light rail" track can have curves with a much smaller radius than would be found on "heavy rail".

My thoughts
 
Take, for instance, the Elephant Train at the zoo in San Francisco.

The term "train" can mean a "string" of "vehicles" connected together end to end. Here in Oz we have "road trains" which are heavy haul trucks with 4, 5, sometimes more, trailers attached. They operate in the more remote regions of the country.

Then what do we make of the term "camel train"? Here in the past (early 1800s) it was a number of camels tethered "head-to-tail" all carrying freight and was a common sight in the "outback" before the transcontinental railroads were built.
 
Light rail today is also the modern terminology for trolleys or trams, depending upon which country you're in. When Boston upgraded its venerable PCC trolleys to the Boeing LRVs, or Boeing Light Rail Vehicles, the Green Line was no longer called a trolley line. It's now light rail.
 
San Francisco had PCC streetcars too. The original Muni ones were ivory and green. I rode one once in 1973 up and down Market Street and that's it. My grandmother got hit by one and broke her arm.
San Francisco's Streamline Vintage Streetcars in 4K - Bing video

SF Muni(cipal) streetcar lines use letters, bus lines use numbers, cable car lines use street names.

Interesting and sad regarding your grandmother. When my dad was in high school, his English teacher made his students recite this.

A little boy asks.
Mother, mother what is that, it looks like strawberry jam?
Hush, my dear she says. It's your Pa run over by a tram!

Anyway...
SF Muni purchased those infamous Boeing LRVs as well at the same time and like Boston had numerous problems with them.

In the late 1970s and well into the 1980s, the problems with the Boeings were so bad that the MBTA took out their aging fleet of PCC trolleys and put them back into revenue service. Today, all but a handful have been scrapped, or sent to some trolley museums. A number of them live on up at the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunk Port, Maine.

The active handful are used in revenue service on the disconnected Ashmont to Milton segment. Even though this is a trolley line, it's considered part of the heavy-rail third-rail Red line. The service was opened in the early 1920s when the New Haven abandoned the Milton end of that branch and only served the mills. That service ended in the 1980s and today, that portion too is now a walking trail that parallels the trolley line. The PCC trolleys that run on that segment were recently refurbed and repainted and are quite popular amongst both the public as well as rail fans. Hmm... I wonder if the "T" were to return the PCC trolleys on a now closed segment, that the public would have been more accepting. Instead, the NIMBYs came out and via a court order had the tracks ripped up instead in favor of stinky busses. Yes. They wanted buses!
 
The old streetcars have almost as much charm as the cable cars in the hills of San Francisco. Cable cars were invented in the later 1800's because horse-drawn street cars and even electric trollies had not the traction for steep grades. I last rode a cable car in 1986 at age 22. The conductor said I had to sit down inside along with the old ladies. I was not allowed to stand on the running board holding the pole like my brave grandfather once did. They go 9 mph. There is a constant underground moving cable in a slot between the track rails. Three SF Muni cable car lines; California/Van Ness, Powel and Hyde Street. My father once rode cable cars to work in San Francisco as a repairman at Burroughs office machines. A bus never has quite the charm of any rail vehicle especially a vintage rail vehicle.
 
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We still have a cable car in Wellington NZ, recently modernised and upgraded. Basically a single line with passing loops and the timing of the cars, one going up while the other is going down, causes them to pass in the passing loops. Unfortunately Wellington did away with their trams, biggest mistake they ever made.

Cheers,
Bill69
 
The DOT defines Light Rail thusly:
Rail transit represents a family of modes ranging from the systems with light vehicles operating at grade, to fully controlled grade-separated high-speed systems. Within this broad range different combinations of vehicles/trains and rights-of-way can be selected for a great variety of applications in urban transportation.
You can read the whole definition here: https://railroads.dot.gov/elibrary/light-rail-transit-systems-definition-and-evalution

"Heavy Rail" is pretty much everything else (on rails). Although a lot of people also use two additional categories: Metro & Unique Systems. Metro systems are things like your subway systems, like the NYCTA, they're heavy rail running in an urban high-capacity system; Unique Systems are all the little odd things that like monorails, and tired-metros.

Your Elephant train would be a "Road Train" and so wouldn't fit under the "Rail" definitions.

That all being said, there really isn't one answer to what is what. A lot of groups & governments have defined them their own way; and there are a number of systems that bridge the gap between two definitions.
 
So, to many folks, TRAIN means something that runs on rails AND/OR consists of a number of interconnected vehicles. In America, we don't usually call a car or a truck with a trailer a TRAIN, however. There are baggage TRAINS at airports without rails.
 
So, to many folks, TRAIN means something that runs on rails AND/OR consists of a number of interconnected vehicles. In America, we don't usually call a car or a truck with a trailer a TRAIN, however. There are baggage TRAINS at airports without rails.


I don't think anywhere calls a tractor & trailer a "train". It only gets the train name if you have multiple trailers, most famously you get them in Australia. However even just a two-trailer truck would be considered a "train".
Road_Train_Australia.jpg
 
Here on Idaho freeways they can have up to 3, and we kind of call them a "truck-train". I would hate to try to pass that fuel "train" on a back road! :eek:
 
Here on Idaho freeways they can have up to 3, and we kind of call them a "truck-train". I would hate to try to pass that fuel "train" on a back road! :eek:

That would be a bit scary, wouldn't it!

Only 2 trailers are allowed back east due to the damage they cause to the roads and bridges. We also have a lot more traffic, which has been taken into consideration as well.
 
This is an LRV

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This is the Amtrak Texas Eagle consist:

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Notice anything different? The LRV is lightweight and short and designed for commuter runs, while an Amtrak consist is long and heavy and designed for longer distance runs. Seems trivial to me.
 
I find trivia fun, however. Back in 2006, living in Palo Alto, California, I commented to a friend about how streamlined the newer Caltrain trains looked. The loco looked like a bullet. I remember the old commuter trains ran by SP on that line from boyhood. It seemed like they had old-fashioned Pullman coaches with bloody-nose Geeps pulling them. The scavenger blower whirr was awesome. Those are my fond memories of trains. My uninterested friend just said the Caltrain with the bullet loco just looked like another "train" to him. Some people are just not railroad aficionados and all "trains" look the same to them. Some people even hate trains. Trains seem scary to some, mysterious to others and still old-fashioned to others. They can be really slow and Amtrak coaches can be uncomfortable to sleep in on long journeys. They missed the golden age of the American railroad, the pre-Amtrak days, when trains were really comfortable and classy means to travel over land.

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I don't think anywhere calls a tractor & trailer a "train". It only gets the train name if you have multiple trailers, most famously you get them in Australia. However even just a two-trailer truck would be considered a "train".
Road_Train_Australia.jpg

Oz, Africa, India, Latin America and Oklahoma (where I now live) all look rough and tumble: not posh, refined and civilized.
 
Also when you ride most roller coasters, a group of cars connected together are called a train, also.
For example, here is a roller coaster that uses individual cars:
 
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I've been on the Disneyland Matterhorn and that wooden bobsled thing looks like a much wilder ride. Steep banks like the Mercedes-Benz test track.
 
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