Beginnings
The line is built to 3 ft (914 mm) gauge and is 17 miles (27.4 km) long from terminus to terminus. It is largely segregated from road traffic, running over two tracks on roadside reservation or private right-of-way, and is electrified using overhead line at 550 volts direct current. Initially the means of power was supplied to the tramcars by pairs of Hopkinson bow collectors (still employed on the Snaefell Mountain Railway today, owing to its dependability in strong winds on the mountain) but by the turn of the 20th century cars were fitted with trolley poles, the method still employed today. Originally the electricity was generated by the railway's own power stations though they are now supplied via the island's grid by the Manx Electricity Authority. Having operated a year-round service from its inception, the line now still provides service throughout the year although the winter service is much less frequent than the summer service and has been intermittently dropped from schedules in recent years altogether to allow a substantial investment in infrastructure and permanent way in addition to relaying longer stretches of rails and sleepers without disturbance.
Read more about this topic: Manx Electric Railway
Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:
“The beginnings of altruism can be seen in children as early as the age of two. How then can we be so concerned that they count by the age of three, read by four, and walk with their hands across the overhead parallel bars by five, and not be concerned that they act with kindness to others?”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)
“These beginnings of commerce on a lake in the wilderness are very interesting,—these larger white birds that come to keep company with the gulls.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)