Trolley, tram, streetcar or cable car...

Do you know the difference between a trolley and a streetcar after a bit of googling and visiting both the San Francisco Railway Museum and the SF Cable Car museum I now know the difference.
Did you think this was what a trolley looked like?

Well here that is a shopping cart. Trolley is another word for streetcar or tram but a cable car is quite different. This website for one of the museums explains succinctly.

http://www.streetcar.org/difference.html

Whilst here in SF we have ridden in a trolley coach, streetcars and cables cars.
This is a trolley coach, basically a bus connected to overhead power lines

There is nothing exciting or unusual about riding on a trolley coach, they are just overcrowded emission free vehicles.

We found the Melbourne tram (streetcar or trolley) whilst exploring San Francisco and almost felt like we were back in Australia.

We asked the man at the railway museum how the tram was acquired and he said the City of Melbourne donated it for the 1987 trolley festival. They have trolleys here from all over the world.

Inside a Market St Trolley we rode in

Sitting in the back row you can see that trolleys are quite large too

A trolley whizzing by us, which is another difference, cable cars don't whizz, they are much slower!

 Cable cars go so slow you can stand safely on the outside of them,

 But is is nice to sit in the front half as well which is open air seating.

Cable cars are small enough to be manually turned on their turntables.

Cable cars are powered by this motor and underground cable system that pulls them around.

The cable cars were also overcrowded, often late, and the drivers were mostly obnoxious. However the trolley drivers have some attitude but in a caring 'get out of the way for the blind man' and 'you kicked my trolley and you still think you are getting on?' kind of way that is pretty cool and humorous.  And the trolley coach drivers are just doing their tedious job whilst putting up with obnoxious riders that won't move down the aisle to let more people on. I preferred the streetcars as a mode of transportation but am glad I tried everything.