tramsdownunder.blogspot.com is a curated selection of posts from the Trams Down Under Google Group.
Posts will only appear after moderation by Mal Rowe and only posts about Australian and New Zealand trams will be accepted.
Posts expressing political views or criticism of tram related groups will not be accepted.
Yesterday's pic of the only A class decorated as an Art Tram
236 is in Victoria Pde with the Melbourne Fire Station tower in the
background.
Selected by Jennifer Mullett and Curator Gail Harradine, this colourful
and gestural monoprint created by Jennifer Mullett in the 1990's is a
contemporary response the intergenerational cultural practice from the
southeast of women's feather flower making.
Mal Rowe who notices that the print design is repeated along the side of
the tram.
This year Brunswick depot has two art trams, with 5002 being the second one.
I don't know the reason, but my guess is that the artists like the big 'blank canvas' a D2 provides.
The artist is Patsy Smith, a Taungurung traditional owner and artist, as well as a founding member and board member of Baluk Arts on the Mornington Peninsula.
Mal Rowe - who made the image today in Elizabeth St just south of the Collins St intersection.
This year Brunswick depot has two art trams, with 5002 being the second one.
I don't know the reason, but my guess is that the artists like the big
'blank canvas' a D2 provides.
The artist is Patsy Smith, a Taungurung traditional owner and artist, as
well as a founding member and board member of Baluk Arts on the
Mornington Peninsula.
Mal Rowe - who made the image today in Elizabeth St just south of the
Collins St intersection.
Yes, the kinematic envelope can determine the position of the bogies and, when they swing, the width of aisle, or indeed whether it is possible to have a trench aisle at all at the ends of the tram. Trams with swivelling bogies running on metre-gauge track do have an issue with having a low floor at the ends of the tram if the curve radius and clearance are too tight, so they have a high floor over the end bogies. Such is the case with the FCB trams. Conversely, the metre-gauge trams in Helsinki are presumably in a better situation and the Škoda trams there have a low floor from end to end.
Tony P
On Thursday, 26 June 2025 at 15:16:46 UTC+10 Matthew Geier wrote:
On 26/6/25 14:57, 'TP' via TramsDownUnder wrote: > It's very similar to the (full length) G2 class, except, as mentioned > elsewhere, having the end swivelling bogies, positioned right at the > end of the tram, rather than in the end saloon as in the G class. This > is to minimise the amount of narrowed aisle resulting from bogie swing.
But the body will overhang more on curves. Presumably Prague has a more generous track spacing than Melbourne.
On 26/6/25 14:57, 'TP' via TramsDownUnder wrote:
> It's very similar to the (full length) G2 class, except, as mentioned
> elsewhere, having the end swivelling bogies, positioned right at the
> end of the tram, rather than in the end saloon as in the G class. This
> is to minimise the amount of narrowed aisle resulting from bogie swing.
But the body will overhang more on curves. Presumably Prague has a more
generous track spacing than Melbourne.
Near the end of the video there is a detailed walk-through worth watching, showing the interior, but the video first starts at the back end where there is an additional nine seats in place of a second driver's cab. The 32 metre long 2.5 metre wide tram has 70 seats and 173 standing places, making a total capacity of 243.
It's very similar to the (full length) G2 class, except, as mentioned elsewhere, having the end swivelling bogies, positioned right at the end of the tram, rather than in the end saloon as in the G class. This is to minimise the amount of narrowed aisle resulting from bogie swing. All of the seats in the 52T are mounted on the flat floor, not on raised plinths.
The 52T is a Forcity Plus model, which first appeared in Bratislava in 2014. There is another example of the Forcity Plus, built for FCB (Frankfurt(Oder)/Cottbus/Brandenburg), which is very similar to the G1 class, having only three modules and the swivelling end bogies under the saloons like the G1. (Again that diabolical situation where trams with different mechanical platforms are classed together as the same model!) The FCB tram is 29 metres long, 156 passenger capacity including 61 seats. It is only 2.4 metres wide and narrow gauge.
The G1 class is 25.2 metres long and has a capacity of 150 (I don't know the number of seats). The G2 class is 35 metres long. Both are 2.65 metres wide. I would be interested to know the number of seats in each, including folding.
We are fortunate to have a copy of the composer software for the Variotram's destination display so It can be set to display anything.
We are also fortunate to have a complete original destination display unit that appears to still work. Not so easy to change what the roller blind says and it only has 30 slots.
The swing plug doors were known to get struck on the platforms if the trams were heavily loaded - the suspension is not 'self leveling' and if lot of people crushed into one of the suspended modules (with the doors) and didn't disburse along the saloon, the module would sag and the doors catch the platform.
Doors could also drag if the wheels were worn and the workshop hadn't put extra suspension spacers in to compensate for it. It's actually in the O&M manual to shim the suspension as the wheel wears to maintain the correct floor to platform height. Shim plates of varying thickness came with the tram.
Could be worse, Chemnitz had problems every winter with the swing plug doors getting stuck on snow built up on the platforms. They eventually chopped the bottom 10cm off the doors and replaced it with a rubber flap.
Great photos. The destination display on the old/not so old trams, Trams After Dark is cool. I rode on these trams but there was little to remember about them, aside from door clearance problems.
Point and shoot cameras really do seem to be redundant now. Phones rule.
I'm sure photos of the more traditional trams that were out tonight, Sydney R1 1979, Brisbane Phonex 548 and Adelaide H 358, will appear online in various places in due course.
> The 'Australian Independent Radio' news at 11am, reporting on the open day running of the Metro Tunnel in Melbourne stated that the event was embraced by members of the public, train chasers and "GUNZELS"!
Gunzels has been in increasing use since at least 1996, when Billy Connelly used it when stepping on to a tram in Melbourne -- one of my fave scenes in my DVD of his "Billy Connelly's World Tour of Australia."
And of course, this comprehensive entry from the FAQ of the old Usenet newgroup Misc Transport Urban Transit, an FAQ that I maintained for some years:
> GUNZEL - a transit, especially train fanatic. GUNZEL. According to Bob Merchant, editor of the Australian enthusiasts' journal "Trolley Wire," the term was first used by Sydney Tramway Museum members in the early 1960s to describe certain enthusiasts in the state of Victoria (Australia) who took their hobby a bit too seriously. The term comes from the film "The Maltese Falcon" in which Elisha Cook Jnr, played Wilmer, Sydney Greenstreet's twisted gun-slinger (gunsel in American gangster slang). The film has been described as one in which there wasn't one decent person in the whole film. The gunsel in the film was what we would describe today as a "Gunzel", a bit thick to say the least. Before Puffing Billy (a heritage steam train in the ranges outside Melbourne) issued their "Gunzel Pass" a few years back, their president, Phil Avard, checked with the STM as to the meaning of the word and its origin. Phil, being a bit of a film buff, understood immediately and the pass was issued. Originally, one did not call a person a Gunzel to their face as it was a bit derogatory. The term Gunzel in the Australian sense was first used by Dick Jones, Don Campbell and Bill Parkinson, all of whom are still members of the STM. The term has since been picked up by New Zealand, UK and some US railfans. See also ANORAK.
It sounds like the design review took unnecessarily long. They have those in Europe too. Public feedback explains why hard wooden or plastic seats are popular there - people associate fabric with dirt. They'd rather a hard seat than not knowing what nasty things are breeding in the fabric beneath you!
How are there so many of the public mad keen to ride a mere new tram? Look at the crowd boarding near the end of this video. The enthusiasts among them stand out like a sore thumb, as they do here!
(who senses that Prague and Melbourne have closed in to a very similar design solution for a legacy system)
On Saturday, 21 June 2025 at 11:10:20 UTC+10 Mal Rowe wrote:
On 20/06/2025 21:41, 'TP' via TramsDownUnder wrote: > In Prague, the contract was awarded in November 2023, more than a year > and a half later. Production started in June 2024, about six months > later, and the first couple of trams arrived in Prague in April and > May 2025, starting homologation trials soon after. The first tram has > reached the stage where it can carry revenue service passengers. > Meanwhile we still wait for the G class. Is this some special > treatment for Australia? I recall that the CAF trams for Sydney took > ages to arrive too. > Hi Tony,
The simple answer is that I don't know, but what I do know is that after the contract was awarded in Victoria there was an extensive design review program involving hundreds of people (including me) visiting the mock-up and giving feedback. Others included people with various access issues including a friend who uses crutches.
I don't know what changes were made after that process - there is no obvious changes in recent renders of the tram appearance.
After the issues with buying 'off the shelf' C and D class trams Victoria is rightly careful.
Mal Rowe - looking forward to a ride and hoping that I find the G as good as the B has been
681201Su - Chermside terminus - dropcentre 378. Roderick Smith.
Having chased trams from mid morning, we had parked near Light St Depot,
and rode for the rest of the day.
I have naturally been following the progress of the G class' close design relative, the Škoda 52T in Prague, which is just now carrying its first public passengers during the homologation process. I'm wondering why Alstom's progress has been so slow? Both companies have equally had to design the tram, which, in each case is a bespoke variant of an existing model. The Melbourne contract was signed in April 2022, with production due to start in later 2023 (did it?). From Mal's comments above, the first tram is due to appear at the end of this year.
In Prague, the contract was awarded in November 2023, more than a year and a half later. Production started in June 2024, about six months later, and the first couple of trams arrived in Prague in April and May 2025, starting homologation trials soon after. The first tram has reached the stage where it can carry revenue service passengers. Meanwhile we still wait for the G class. Is this some special treatment for Australia? I recall that the CAF trams for Sydney took ages to arrive too.
Tony P
On Saturday, 31 May 2025 at 01:14:58 UTC+10 Steven Altham wrote:
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TramsDownUnder" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tramsdownunde...@googlegroups.com.
On 20/06/2025 21:41, 'TP' via TramsDownUnder wrote:
> In Prague, the contract was awarded in November 2023, more than a year
> and a half later. Production started in June 2024, about six months
> later, and the first couple of trams arrived in Prague in April and
> May 2025, starting homologation trials soon after. The first tram has
> reached the stage where it can carry revenue service passengers.
> Meanwhile we still wait for the G class. Is this some special
> treatment for Australia? I recall that the CAF trams for Sydney took
> ages to arrive too.
>
Hi Tony,
The simple answer is that I don't know, but what I do know is that after
the contract was awarded in Victoria there was an extensive design
review program involving hundreds of people (including me) visiting the
mock-up and giving feedback. Others included people with various access
issues including a friend who uses crutches.
I don't know what changes were made after that process - there is no
obvious changes in recent renders of the tram appearance.
After the issues with buying 'off the shelf' C and D class trams
Victoria is rightly careful.
Mal Rowe - looking forward to a ride and hoping that I find the G as
good as the B has been
I have naturally been following the progress of the G class' close design relative, the Škoda 52T in Prague, which is just now carrying its first public passengers during the homologation process. I'm wondering why Alstom's progress has been so slow? Both companies have equally had to design the tram, which, in each case is a bespoke variant of an existing model. The Melbourne contract was signed in April 2022, with production due to start in later 2023 (did it?). From Mal's comments above, the first tram is due to appear at the end of this year.
In Prague, the contract was awarded in November 2023, more than a year and a half later. Production started in June 2024, about six months later, and the first couple of trams arrived in Prague in April and May 2025, starting homologation trials soon after. The first tram has reached the stage where it can carry revenue service passengers. Meanwhile we still wait for the G class. Is this some special treatment for Australia? I recall that the CAF trams for Sydney took ages to arrive too.
Tony P
On Saturday, 31 May 2025 at 01:14:58 UTC+10 Steven Altham wrote:
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TramsDownUnder" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tramsdownunde...@googlegroups.com.
I have come down with a cold, so will be an apology for tomorrow - Thursday.
Mal Rowe hoping others have a good night as usual.
From Mal in transit
From: Mal Rowe <mal.rowe@gmail.com> Sent: Monday, June 16, 2025 4:07:28 PM To: TramsDownUnder <tramsdownunder@googlegroups.com> Cc: Blogspot <mal.rowe.pcc980@blogger.com> Subject: TDU at the pub
The forecast for Thursday is for a balmy 14 degrees with no rain.
So it's a good night to meet fellow tram people at the Royal Standard hotel in William St Melbourne around 6pm.
Ask for "Mal's table".
I might even go into the city a bit early to take some snaps - like the attached pic made last Friday near the Arts Centre when the City of Melbourne reminded me that there are lots of things to see and do that are "Only in the City".
Mal Rowe, noting that there are five trams in the pic - not uncommon in St Kilda Rd.
The forecast for Thursday is for a balmy 14 degrees with no rain.
So it's a good night to meet fellow tram people at the Royal Standard
hotel in William St Melbourne around 6pm.
Ask for "Mal's table".
I might even go into the city a bit early to take some snaps - like the
attached pic made last Friday near the Arts Centre when the City of
Melbourne reminded me that there are lots of things to see and do that
are "Only in the City".
Mal Rowe, noting that there are five trams in the pic - not uncommon in
St Kilda Rd.
Ohio Brass did, indeed, catalogue ice cutting trolley wheels and
"shoes." The company was sold, and overhead wire components are still
available from the successor company. Not sure about the ice cutting
wheels or carbon insert trolley skids. Ohio Brass also manufactured
"Tomlinson tight lock couplers." Those are still manufactured by another
manufacturer in the'States.
Sent from my iPhone
> On Jun 13, 2025, at 3:18 AM, 'Matthew Geier' via TramsDownUnder
> <tramsdownunder@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Ice and trams isn't exactly a 'new' problem.
>
> Did that old Ohio brass catalogue that was posted here years ago have
> 'ice cutter' trolley heads in the catalogue ?
>
>
> --
1910~ Kalgoorlie (WA) corner of Hannan and Maritana: tram tracks and
Australia Hotel.
I'm guess the date from the clothing. The tram system was opened in 1902.
I salvaged this from a scan of a torn print posted somewhere.
681201Su - Dropcentre 374 inbound from Bardon on the single-track section in Simpsons Rd between Chiswick Rd and Camp Rd. Roderick Smith.
The double-wire overhead, to control the signalling, shows clearly [lost in salvaging the preceding posted photo]. AFAIK the suburb here is still Bardon. The house with the high-pitched gable and shed dormer is still there, providing a 'then & now' link.
Mr Lee-Williams is not very informed in tramway matters.
Škoda has a design specifically directed at eliminating this sort of hazard in coupled trams. It can be seen for example in Turkey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQoWtaDcp50
It's a sloping "bonnet" over the coupling that makes it basically impossible for somebody to stand on the coupling and hold onto something.
Tony P
On Saturday, 7 June 2025 at 13:09:07 UTC+10 Tony Galloway wrote:
This individual died because they ignored the warning, did something profoundly stupid and suffered the consequences.
If the vehicle involved was a truck and trailer instead of a tram the incident would be regarded entirely as the fault of the deceased not as a "design problem" with the vehicle.
But if it runs on rails the vehicle is assumed to be the problem, not the actions of the individual who made a bad decision.
Police say initial inquiries show the man was attempting to cross the light rail track between two carriages when the tram began moving and trapped him. Photograph: Paul Braven/AAP
For the second time in two years, a pedestrian has died after being struck by a tram on Sydney's light rail.
New South Wales police said they found a man under a tram carriage in Surry Hills on Thursday afternoon. Paramedics treated him at the scene, but he died.
Police said initial inquiries showed the man was attempting to cross the light rail track between two carriages when the tram began moving and trapped him.
In May 2023, a teenage girl died after attempting to cross a street in Sydney's CBD between two tram carriages. She became trapped underneath one of them when the tram started moving, suffering fatal injuries.
People cross the tram lines at Surry Hills tram stop the day after a person was killed while crossing the tracks. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian
That two similar deaths occurred just two years apart meant police, the premier, and transport bureaucrats fielded questions from the media this week over whether the light rail network, and the trams themselves, should be made safer.
Dr Geoffrey Clinton, a senior lecturer in transport management at the University of Sydney, said it was "probably wise" for the government to investigate additional safety measures to stop people from attempting to climb over them.
Sydney's light rail network uses a few different tram models – what bureaucrats call "rolling stock". What they have in common is that they typically have separate carriages that are coupled together to form a longer vehicle, unlike trams in Melbourne, which have only one carriage.
Many of the trams now have "danger" signs on the joinery between the carriages, warning people not to try to climb over them. Clinton said the state government or the network's private operator, Transdev, could consider additional signage.
"Or even something like a net between the two carriages to discourage people from trying to clamber through," he said.
He posed the idea of running the trams twice as frequently with only one carriage, making them half as long, but said it didn't "seem like a feasible solution".
"[That] would very expensive to do and wouldn't add to the capacity of the network, but it would double the labour cost," he said.
The transport minister, John Graham, declined to comment. A Transport for New South Wales (TfNSW) spokesperson said the man's death was "extremely distressing".
The NSW police inspector Anderson Lessing on Thursday said that after speaking to witnesses and reviewing CCTV, it appeared the man had stepped between the tram carriages off the platform at the light rail stop on Devonshire Street.
The Surry Hills light rail stop in inner Sydney on 6 June, 2025. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian
"There's obviously risk involved, but it comes back to personal responsibility when you do cross the tram line, and it's that balance that we have to get right," he said.
The TfNSW coordinator-general, Howard Collins, expressed his condolences to the man's family and first responders.
He said the Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator (ONRSR) would work with Transdev to establish whether any safety recommendations could be made or whether the death was "a case of really unfortunate misadventure".
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau and NSW Office of Transport Safety Investigations said they had not reviewed the 2023 death and would not to review Thursday's one either.
"[We] have reviewed the initial available information and determined that, as in the 2023 occurrence … it is unlikely an independent transport safety investigation would identify any new or unknown transport safety factor that could prevent an incident of this nature from occurring in the future," a spokesperson said.
The premier, Chris Minns, said he was sorry for the man and his family, but he wouldn't be drawn on whether the government was considering any safety upgrades.
"The safety regulator's in place," he said. "It's obviously the case that whenever there's a terrible event like this, a terrible incident, they conduct an investigation."
Terry Lee-Williams, a transport planning strategist, said it was "awful that somebody died", but overall, Sydney's light rail network was safe and "actually quite a low speed system".
One suggestion for improving safety could be replacing the trams with the concertina-like ones used in Melbourne, he said, but this would be costly.
He said Sydney's trams were a "standard design" and similar to those operated in many European countries.
"You don't see much of the Melbourne-style trams around the world because they're less accessible," he said. "Sydney has very narrow, windy streets."
This individual died because they ignored the warning, did something profoundly stupid and suffered the consequences.
If the vehicle involved was a truck and trailer instead of a tram the incident would be regarded entirely as the fault of the deceased not as a "design problem" with the vehicle.
But if it runs on rails the vehicle is assumed to be the problem, not the actions of the individual who made a bad decision.
Police say initial inquiries show the man was attempting to cross the light rail track between two carriages when the tram began moving and trapped him. Photograph: Paul Braven/AAP
For the second time in two years, a pedestrian has died after being struck by a tram on Sydney's light rail.
New South Wales police said they found a man under a tram carriage in Surry Hills on Thursday afternoon. Paramedics treated him at the scene, but he died.
Police said initial inquiries showed the man was attempting to cross the light rail track between two carriages when the tram began moving and trapped him.
In May 2023, a teenage girl died after attempting to cross a street in Sydney's CBD between two tram carriages. She became trapped underneath one of them when the tram started moving, suffering fatal injuries.
People cross the tram lines at Surry Hills tram stop the day after a person was killed while crossing the tracks. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian
That two similar deaths occurred just two years apart meant police, the premier, and transport bureaucrats fielded questions from the media this week over whether the light rail network, and the trams themselves, should be made safer.
Dr Geoffrey Clinton, a senior lecturer in transport management at the University of Sydney, said it was "probably wise" for the government to investigate additional safety measures to stop people from attempting to climb over them.
Sydney's light rail network uses a few different tram models – what bureaucrats call "rolling stock". What they have in common is that they typically have separate carriages that are coupled together to form a longer vehicle, unlike trams in Melbourne, which have only one carriage.
Many of the trams now have "danger" signs on the joinery between the carriages, warning people not to try to climb over them. Clinton said the state government or the network's private operator, Transdev, could consider additional signage.
"Or even something like a net between the two carriages to discourage people from trying to clamber through," he said.
He posed the idea of running the trams twice as frequently with only one carriage, making them half as long, but said it didn't "seem like a feasible solution".
"[That] would very expensive to do and wouldn't add to the capacity of the network, but it would double the labour cost," he said.
The transport minister, John Graham, declined to comment. A Transport for New South Wales (TfNSW) spokesperson said the man's death was "extremely distressing".
The NSW police inspector Anderson Lessing on Thursday said that after speaking to witnesses and reviewing CCTV, it appeared the man had stepped between the tram carriages off the platform at the light rail stop on Devonshire Street.
The Surry Hills light rail stop in inner Sydney on 6 June, 2025. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian
"There's obviously risk involved, but it comes back to personal responsibility when you do cross the tram line, and it's that balance that we have to get right," he said.
The TfNSW coordinator-general, Howard Collins, expressed his condolences to the man's family and first responders.
He said the Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator (ONRSR) would work with Transdev to establish whether any safety recommendations could be made or whether the death was "a case of really unfortunate misadventure".
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau and NSW Office of Transport Safety Investigations said they had not reviewed the 2023 death and would not to review Thursday's one either.
"[We] have reviewed the initial available information and determined that, as in the 2023 occurrence … it is unlikely an independent transport safety investigation would identify any new or unknown transport safety factor that could prevent an incident of this nature from occurring in the future," a spokesperson said.
The premier, Chris Minns, said he was sorry for the man and his family, but he wouldn't be drawn on whether the government was considering any safety upgrades.
"The safety regulator's in place," he said. "It's obviously the case that whenever there's a terrible event like this, a terrible incident, they conduct an investigation."
Terry Lee-Williams, a transport planning strategist, said it was "awful that somebody died", but overall, Sydney's light rail network was safe and "actually quite a low speed system".
One suggestion for improving safety could be replacing the trams with the concertina-like ones used in Melbourne, he said, but this would be costly.
He said Sydney's trams were a "standard design" and similar to those operated in many European countries.
"You don't see much of the Melbourne-style trams around the world because they're less accessible," he said. "Sydney has very narrow, windy streets."
