Grand union
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- This article is about a type of tram junction. For the canal, see Grand Union Canal, for the supermarket, see Grand Union, for the rail operator, see Grand Union Railway, for the flag, see Grand Union Flag.
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In North American street railway practice, a grand union is a rail track junction where two two-track railway lines meet, usually at a street intersection, and railroad switches allow any streetcar coming from any direction to turn either left or right onto the intersecting line.
These complex junctions, an example of special work, offered great operating flexibility, but were expensive to build and expensive to maintain. Special parts, sometimes made of manganese steel, were needed for each location where one rail crossed another, and these parts often needed to be custom-made and fitted for each location.
One of the largest street railway operations, in Brooklyn, New York City, did not have a single grand union. The most extensive surviving street railway system in North America, which has several, is the Toronto streetcar system of the Toronto Transit Commission in Toronto, Canada. The one time Montreal Tramways Company or Montreal street railway system also had a number of them. [1][citation needed] The only surviving grand union in the Southern Hemisphere is Balaclava Junction in Melbourne, Australia. New Zealand formerly had two in Auckland, at Queen Street's intersections with Customs Street and Wellesley Street.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ Graham Stewart, The End of the Penny Section: When Trams Ruled the Streets of New Zealand, rev ed. (Wellington: Grantham House, 1993), p. 149.
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