With the exception of Hamburg, all large and most medium-sized German cities maintain light rail networks. After World War II, the Germans retained many of their streetcar networks and evolved them into model light rail systems ( Stadtbahnen). An attempt by Boeing Vertol to introduce a new American light rail vehicle in the 1970s was proven to have been a technical failure by the following decade. Revival Īlthough some traditional trolley or tram systems continued to exist in San Francisco and elsewhere the term "light rail" has come to mean a different type of rail system as modern light rail technology has primarily post-WWII West German origins. Britain abandoned its tram systems, except for Blackpool, with the closure of Glasgow Corporation Tramways (one of the largest in Europe) in 1962. Many original tram and streetcar systems in the United Kingdom, United States, and elsewhere were decommissioned starting in the 1950s as subsidies for the car increased. It initially drew current from the rails, with overhead wire being installed in 1883. The first interurban to emerge in the United States was the Newark and Granville Street Railway in Ohio, which opened in 1889. This was the world's first commercially successful electric tram. ![]() It was built by Werner von Siemens who contacted Pirotsky. ![]() The second line was the Gross-Lichterfelde tramway in Lichterfelde near Berlin in Germany, which opened in 1881. The world's first electric tram line operated in Sestroretsk near Saint Petersburg, Russia, invented and tested by Fyodor Pirotsky in 1880. Streetcar built by Preston Car Company in Ontario
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