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January 28 2012. Here's the photographic evidence. Trolleys are back in Dayton. Consult this website for future questions, and do not take advice from or pay attention to those without a clue. You can recognize them because they run around saying, "the wires are falling, this is Edmonton, the wires are falling." Or they don't live a house away from an active trolley line in Dayton.
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In news on other lines, flags also are starting to mark future pole locations for North Main and Patterson and Woodman. And many of the 200 poles the RTA ordered in the fall have arrived and are in the yard off Ludlow St, waiting to go up.
December 12 2011. Strange. No comments from the tinfoil hat brigade to the September material. While that crowd has a collectively large big mouth, like all bigmouths, they seem to disappear when a time could come for them to be contrite for going off the deep end and admit they called it wrong. And the most craven and worst of them stridently deny later that they said anything untoward, or that somehow their words on multiple occasions were misinterpreted, and then proceed to find something else to reattack about instead. Fair enough; you (along with I) know who you are, and bear in mind I have untreated Irish Alzheimers. That is, I forget everything but the grudge.
1/2 and 5 ops. Lots of activity of late. To review, the 1/2 and 5 franchise runs are running trolley more often than not. I tried for an impromptu fantrip the day after Thanksgiving, but the 1/2 wasn't running, and I didn't want to hang around to ride the 5 at night (picture opportunities are reduced). I note the 5 has been trolley every time I've looked from late October onward. I also occasionally see the morning 1/2.
Wayne Ave construction. Of late, the GDRTA has strung spanwires on the construction on the south end of the 3 on Wayne Ave. Not sure when they'll be hanging trolley wire. Interestingly, that part of the line has the feeders underground. Perhaps we'll be seeing more of that in city construction. Previously (for the past ... 116 years on that stretch of line), the feeder was in the air.
Sewer work. In other positive news, the construction on the outer end of the 4 (Formerly Townview now Hoover Townview) is purportedly getting ready to complete. Recall that construction closed about a half mile of Hoover Ave between Guenther and Gardendale for sewer reconstruction. I haven't set eyes myself out there in a month or so, but reports are that it's done.
New 4 ops soon? Hopefully the 4 becomes trolley soon. I have seen six separate trolleys out operator training today and Friday. Emailers to me have asked about repaints. Those keeping track ... 9802, 9816, 9824 and 9845 had been rebuilt trolleys that had made it out on the street prior to the downtime of this past spring/summer. 9802 and 9845 are "Electric Pickles", having acquired the new (and I might add nighttime invisible) dark green paint job. 9837 reappeared in September repainted in City Transit, but with the "It's Time to Ride" logos front and back. Today, I saw 9814, fresh out of the paint shop, in City Transit aqua, yellow and cream, but not time to ride (yet -- no new logos). Unfortunately, I had no camera. I had lunch at Amber Rose Restaurant (Valley and Bickmore), and saw not one but two operator training trolleys today making the turn onto Bickmore.
The 7 and 8. The issues resolving the construction woes on the 7 (North Main at I-75 and Woodman/Patterson) and the 8 (Germantown at I-75 and Germantown/Lakeview/McGee Blvd) are starting on the path to resolution. Recall that wire came down to support stimulus spending for road construction in all those areas. In a couple of the cases, the poles and wires that came down had difficulties in going back up, and in other cases, the construction continues. All the locales would be problematic for off-wire repoling operations, as they would require buses stopping in both directions on very busy streets to regularly repole. Line poles were talked about at a recent RTA Board meeting, and are reportedly in procurement, which would be the first steps to retrolleyize both these lines.
Infrastructure updating. By my observation, the GDRTA has planted and put into service at least a dozen new poles sprinkled around the south end of the 5 on Brown and Far Hills Ave. They have also been repainting all the poles on that stretch of line ... including blocking northbound Far Hills near Harman this afternoon in order to complete painting on a couple poles.
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- "But it was allowed to happen. Very little, if any, of the system is operable anymore. Seeing the fleet like this makes one understand why nothing is running. I believe that Dayton will be the next Edmonton {very soon}."
- "The Skodas in the photos are dead lined coaches waiting to be sold for scrap. They are in 'bone yards'. Many have already been scrapped, as far as I know."
- "Something just doesn't pass the smell test here. I think there's more to this than meets the eye. It looks like anti-trolley coach forces are at work here."
- "My guess is that there aren't presently enough operable coaches to run the system even if the lines came back tomorrow. There's more here than meets the eye."
May I suggest something stronger for your hat wrapping needs?
The trolleys in Dayton are back. The morning and evening 1/2 franchise run is operational as of September 8 2011.
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For you guys who just changed the foil on your hats ... the GDRTA Board of Trustees earlier this year (2011) passed a resolution to retain ETBs based on a recent publically available economic analysis. This was followed up by a recent approval to purchase 200 new line poles. Trolley buses in Dayton Ohio are not going away anytime soon. See the pictures below to see the ongoing road construction on the major (and several minor) trolley routes in Dayton. The construction isn't complete, but it will be.
Courtesy of one of the local fans, we now have pictures of an ETI in the paint shop, and also of the connections on the new wire out on the combined 3/4. Another contributor indicates that there was a long discussion at the RTA Trustees meeting regarding the trolleys, and the situation with road construction.
Another person relayed a story from another nonDayton "fan" who believes no line maintenance is taking place. Really? Those eight newly poured concrete pole bases on Far Hills and Brown would seem to tend to counter that argument. Course all the other yellow tape on decrepit poles all over town is probably some new fangled advertising campaign, and not an indication to the line crews as to where new poles need to go.
Seriously, why not stop gossiping, and drop a line to get the full story? If you don't know now, don't listen anymore to those loudmouthed knuckleheads from at least 600 miles away posting demise of Dayton speculation on your favorite mailing list. Especially, don't listen when anybody says 'I think'
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