Shoes

“Baby needs a new pair of shoes.” That’s what I say when I am hitting hard, or I see sparks at night off of my collectors. Shoes are the carbon blocks sitting inside the brasserie or metal brackets that form a slot at the end of our trolley poles. This is the point at which we collect our power from the overhead. The shoes sit inside of the collectors. 600 volts of direct current are fed through the feeder wires, which come from certain utility poles, which carry the wires upon which we travel.

Next time you are on a hill by some trolley line, look for the poles, which are carrying the power. You can see the wires coming directly out of the pole and on to the overhead. If too many buses are too close together, especially on a steep hill, the power breaker will go off and we will temporarily lose power because the feeder wire cannot handle the load. This shut-off of power, or a tripping of the circuit breaker can occur leaving Chinatown on Sacramento Street heading outbound up the hill to Nob Hill, and also on Union Street leaving Van Ness inbound. It didn’t take me long to learn this fact.

Heading inbound on the 41 Line, I was not too far behind two smaller coaches that started across Van Ness as I pulled in to the zone to pick up a few runners. But because the next stop at Polk is on a steep hill with a short green light, the two buses did not clear the Polk Street stop as I crossed Van Ness and began to climb. Sure enough, as I got close to Polk, they started to move on to Larkin. But this is one of the steepest grade in the system. Since no one was waiting at Polk, I did not kill the light, but proceeded ahead before the light turned red. I figured the other buses would be on to the next block before I crossed Larkin, just as business as usual such as in the Mission line I was familiar with. Big mistake. My pull on the power caused the bus in front of me to slow down dramatically, and I put the pedal to the medal, but the bus came to a stop. I looked back and saw another bus crossing Van Ness and beginning to climb. There were now four buses in three blocks, loaded with passengers getting to work, and two of us were stopped.

I put on the parking brake and waited for the bus in front of me to start moving. Fortunately, he was able to start moving forward once I stopped draining energy from the wires. But another bus behind me was starting to climb from Van Ness, and sure enough, I saw the bus in front start to slow down as the bus behind me started to hit the steep grade. I won’t follow too close from now on. The feeling of powerlessness when I put my foot down on the power pedal, and start to lose power on a hill, with a full bus, is not something I would like to experience again.

Having a traction brush fail is also another scary movie. In departing Chinatown for Nob Hill, I lost all forward traction on the bus. And the parking brake would not hold the coach, either. All I could do is hold my foot on the service brake, and call for help. One thing I did forget about was when the air in lines reaches a certain point below 60 pounds per square inch, the emergency brake will pop up and hold the coach. But this is a small comfort when the air in the lines is not holding the coach at a higher pressure. Did I really want to test the pop-up and see if it would hold? Luckily, it did. But I sure hope I never get that coach again when I am leaving Chinatown during peak period!

After rain for a week, all the carbon dust built-up on the wires gets washed away. This is great for keeping our hands clean, should we need to use the ropes to replace our poles on the wires; but not good for wear and tear on the carbon shoe. It cuts faster in to the wire because there is no more dust to act as a lubricant. The groove in our shoe gets deep. Our collectors hit the hangars and crossovers with a loud ka-chunk, and our poles drop down off of the wires. We need new shoes.

There is a special slot in the range of the poles where we can hold the pole down to look at the shoes. This is at about a 45 degree angle from where the pole attaches on to the roof of the bus. We can look to see if the carbon is cracked or deeply grooved. Sometimes when we look there is no carbon at all in the collector! We cannot drive the bus forward from that point and must not move until the shop arrives and replaces the carbon. And when we have new carbons, we still have to be careful in crossing other wires, because the slot in the new carbon is very small, and the poles can fall off of the wires easily.

Now, the shop checks every coaches’ carbons when we pull in after a.m. rush. They also check the temperature to see if our shunts are working and we have enough swivel. This helps keep the Zen!

Paying attention to how hard the coach is hitting the wires is good for staying in the Zen of driving a bus in San Francisco.