Queen Anne Counterbalance

The Queen Anne Counterbalance was a funicular streetcar line operated by the Seattle Electric Company, serving the steep slope along its namesake street on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle, Washington, from 1901 to 1940. It replaced an earlier cable car line built by the Front Street Cable Railway in 1891.

The steep hill along Queen Anne Avenue has grades of up to 19 percent between Mercer and Comstock. The initial cable car service to the top of the hill that was completed in 1891 used a route north via Second Avenue from the existing cable car powerhouse at Denny Way and 2nd, west via Aloha Street to Queen Anne Avenue, then north via Queen Anne to the terminus at Highland Drive. After Seattle Electric Company took over the Front Street Cable Railway in 1900, the line was electrified, rerouted, and combined with the Front Street line as the West Queen Anne line, which ran north/northwest from Pioneer Square (Walker and First Ave S) to Seventh Ave W and W McGraw St via Queen Anne and Galer. Although most of the route was operated using the electric traction motors alone, the Counterbalance portion of the West Queen Anne line used counterweight assistance to ascend and descend approximately half of the route along Queen Anne Avenue; this subsection ran north–south between Roy and Comstock.

The counterbalance that began operation in 1901 used an underground cable that looped around two sheaves each 10 ft (3.05 m) in diameter; the sheaves were at the top (under the intersection with Comstock) and bottom (Roy) of the hill. The surface-running passenger streetcar attached to the upper cable length and ran on tracks at street level. The lower cable length was connected to a rail car counterweight that ran on a parallel set of tracks in an underground tunnel below the surface tracks. A narrow gauge railway (2 ft 6 in or 762 mm) was laid in the tunnel for the counterweight rail car, laden with 16 short tons (14 long tons; 15 t) of concrete and pig iron. When the streetcar ascended or descended, it would be counterbalanced by the descending or ascending rail car. The counterweight rail car was equipped with a spring-loaded safety stop that would automatically stop the car if the cable broke. The timber-lined counterweight tunnel was set at a constant grade of 13.5%, aside from the top and bottom ends, and has a cross-section of 5 ft (1.5 m) wide by 4 ft (1.2 m) tall.

At the top and bottom of the hill, the streetcar would stop so that attendants stationed in small booths could engage (or disengage) the streetcar from the counterbalance cable and adjust the weight of the counterbalance rail car; the work-intensive attachment and adjustment processes limited minimum headways to 12 minutes. The car connected to a "plow" attached to the upper cable run; the plow was a single plate of steel, 3⁄4 in (19 mm) thick, which projected a few inches above the center slot. The conductor controlled a cross-bar attached to the streetcar; the bar dropped into a notch cut into the center of the plow.

This design was invented by J.P.F. Kuhlmann, a civil engineer in Seattle, and was implemented earlier in that city on Washington Avenue (1891, 16% grade) and on Rainier Avenue (17% grade). Outside of Seattle, the Kuhlmann design also was used on the Front Street route (14% grade) of the City & West Portland Motor Line in Portland, Oregon, the College Hill line (15% grade) of the Union Railroad in Providence, Rhode Island, and the Selby Avenue line (1898, 16% grade) in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Queen Anne Counterbalance had the largest tunnel and counterweight car of all the Kuhlmann systems. A similar underground counterweight system was used for the Balmain Tramway extension, but with horizontal sheaves.

In 1902, a parallel set of tracks were added on the west side of Queen Anne Avenue, with a second underground tunnel and independent counterweight railcar. That year, Seattle Electric Company also purchased ten new streetcars to serve the line, numbered 311 to 320, which were built by the Stephenson Car Company. Most served until service over the line was discontinued in 1940. In 1908, the first tunnel was rebuilt with reinforced concrete supports.

Initially, the Front Street Cable Railway (FSCRy) started a cable car franchise in 1889, connecting Pioneer Square and Denny Way via Front Street (now First Avenue) in Seattle. FSCRy extended its line north to Highland Drive via 2nd, Aloha, and Queen Anne under a subsidiary called the North Seattle Cable Railway Company in 1891. Cable cars, as designed for hilly San Francisco, were ideal for the steep northernmost blocks of the extended line.

The panic of 1893 left the company weak and after going bankrupt in 1898, FSCRy and its franchises were acquired by a division of Stone & Webster, the Seattle Electric Company, in 1900. Seattle Electric promptly started electrifying the cable car lines to reduce operating costs. Due to the extreme grade of the northernmost blocks along Queen Anne (between Mercer and Comstock), electric streetcars would have to rely on a counterbalance system to supplement their motors, leaving it as one of the last cable car lines in Seattle. By early 1901, the Queen Anne Counterbalance began operation with a single track.