the.com/tramway
A train that gave up on having its own lane and just vibes with traffic.
means A track-guided transport system (or the vehicles and route) running cars along rails set into or alongside public roads, usually for moving people through a town or city.
from Built from 'tram' — a word that surfaces in English and Scots dialect for a cart or the wooden/metal rail-beam it ran on, likely tracing back to Germanic words for a wooden beam or shaft — plus '-way' simply meaning a route or path. Tramways started as horse-drawn wagons rolling on rails through mining country, then graduated to city streets and electric power, dragging the old beam-word along for the ride.
- origin
- Named after Outram, not the rope-pulling kind
- shares road
- Unlike trains, runs on streets with cars
- global icon
- San Francisco cable cars are technically tramways
- comeback kid
- Ripped out mid-1900s, now rebuilt in many cities