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TRALEE, a market town and seaport, and the county town of Co. Kerry, Ireland, on the Ballymullen or Leigh River, about a mile from its mouth in Tralee Bay, and on the Great Southern & Western railway. Pop. (1901), 9687. A ship canal, permitting the passage of ships of 200 tons burden, connects it with Tralee Bay. Large vessels discharge at Fenit, 8 m. westward, where there is a pier connected with Tralee by rail. Coal, iron and timber are imported, and there is a considerable export of grain. There is a large trade in butter. Railways serve the neighbouring seaside watering-places of Ballybunnion and Castlegregory, and the coast scenery of this part is grand and varied. Four miles north-west of Tralee is Ardfert, with its cathedral, one of the oldest foundations in Ireland, now united to the see of Limerick. St Brendan was its original founder, and it had once a university. A neighbouring round tower fell in 1870. Seven miles north of this again is the fine round lower of Rattoo.

Tralee, anciently Traleigh, the “ strand of the Leigh,” owes its origin to the foundation of a Dominican monastery in 1213 by John Fitz-Thomas, of the Geraldine family. During the reign of Elizabeth it was in the possession of Earl Desmond, on whose forfeiture it came into possession of the Dennys. At the time of the rebellion in 1641 the English families in the neighbourhood asked to be placed in the castle under the charge of Sir Edward Denny, but during his absence a surrender was made. The town was incorporated by James I., and returned two members to the Irish parliament. Though disfranchised at the Union in 1800, it obtained the privilege of returning one member in 1832, but in 1885 it was merged in the county division. It is governed by an urban district council.

TRALLES (mod. Güzel Hissar), an ancient town of Caria, Asia Minor, situated on the Eudon, a tributary of the Maeander. It was reputed an Argive and Thracian colony, and was long under Persian rule, of which we hear in the history of Dercyllidas’ raid from Ephesus in 397 Fortified and increased by the Seleucids and Pergamenians, who renamed it successively Seleucia and Antiochia, it passed to Rome in 133. Though satirized in a famous line (Juv. Sat. iii. 70) as a remote provincial place, it had many wealthy inhabitants in the Roman period and, to judge by objects discovered there, contained many notable works of art. Two of the best marble heads in the Constantinople museum came from Tralles; and both in the excavations conducted for that museum by Edhem Bey (1904), and by chance discoveries, fine-art products have come to light on the site. Rebuilt by Andronicus II., about 1280, it was superseded a few years later, after the Seljuk conquest, by a new town, founded by the amir Aidin in a lower situation (see ).

TRAMORE, a market village and seaside resort of Co. Waterford, Ireland, on the bay of the same name, 7 m. S. of the city of Waterford, and the terminus of the Waterford & Tramore railway. The situation is pleasant, and the neighbouring coast exhibits bold cliff scenery. The bay is open to the south, and is dangerous to navigators, as in foggy weather it has been frequently mistaken for the entrance to Waterford Harbour. On the cliffs to the west are three towers, one having a curious iron figure known as the “metal man,” erected as a warning to sailors. The bay is divided into an outer part and an inner lagoon (the Back Strand) by a spit of sand, with a strait, crossed by a ferry at its eastern extremity. A monument commemorates the wreck of the troopship “Seahorse” in 1816. Four miles west is Dunhill Castle, well situated on a precipitous rock.

 TRAMP, a vagrant, one who “tramps” or walks the roads begging from house to house or ostensibly looking for work, but with no home and habitually sleeping out or moving on from the casual ward of one workhouse to that of another (see ). The word is the shortened form of “tramper,” one who tramps or walks with heavy tread. The term “tramp” is also used of a cargo steamer not running on a regular line but passing from port to port where freight may be picked up.

 TRAMWAY, a track or line of rails laid down in the public roads or streets (hence the American equivalent “street railway”), along which wheeled vehicles are run for the conveyance of passengers (and occasionally of goods) by animal or mechanical power; also a light roughly laid railway used for transporting coals, both underground and on the surface, and for other similar purposes. The word has been connected with the name of Benjamin Outram, an engineer who, at the beginning of the 19th century, was concerned in the construction of tram roads, and has been explained as an abbreviation for “Outram way.” But this is clearly wrong, since the word is found much earlier. It appears to be of Scandinavian origin and primarily to mean a beam of wood, cf. Old Swedish tråm, trum, which have that sense. In a will dated 1555 reference is made to amending a “higheway or tram” in Bernard Castle, where a log road seems to be in question. In Lowland Scottish “tram” was used both of a beam of wood and specifically of such a beam employed as the shaft of a cart, and the name is still often given in England to the wheeled vehicles used for carrying coal-in mining, “Tramway,” therefore, is primarily either a way made with beams of wood or one intended for the use of “trams” containing coal (see ).

Construction.—The first tramway or street railway designed for passenger cars with flanged wheels was built in New York in 1832. The construction of this tramway does not appear to have been a success, and it was soon discontinued. In 1852 tramways were revived in New York by a French engineer named Loubat, who constructed the track of flat wrought-iron rails with a wide, deep groove in the upper surface, laid on longitudinal timbers. The groove, which was designed for wheel flanges similar to those employed on railways, proved dangerous to the light, narrow-tired vehicles of the American type. To meet this difficulty a step-rail consisting of a flat plate with a step at one side raised about in. above the surface was designed and laid at Philadelphia in 1855. When tramways were first introduced into England by G. F. Train in 1860 a rail similar to that laid at Philadelphia was adopted. This rail (fig. 1) was made of wrought iron and weighed 50 ℔ per yard. It was 6 in. wide and had a step in. above the sole. The rails were spiked to longitudinal timbers, which rested on transverse sleepers, and they were laid to a gauge of 4 ft. 8 in. Tramways of this type were laid at Birkenhead in 1860, at London in 1861, and in the Potteries (North Staffordshire) in 1863. The English public, however, would not tolerate the danger and obstruction caused by the step-rail, with its large area of slippery iron surface, and the tramway laid in London had to be removed, while those at Birkenhead and the Potteries were only saved by being relaid with grooved rails. Thus, while the step-rail became the standard form used in the United States, the grooved-rail became generally adopted in Europe. From the tramway point of View the step-rail has many advantages. A groove collects ice and dirt, and on curves binds the wheel flanges, increasing the resistance to traction. A grooved rail is, however, far less of a nuisance to the