Re: Re: Russell St [Was: Glenhuntly - 1957 and 2017]
  Mick Duncan

Gday Mal

Please write your article on track, a field not well covered

Cheers, Mick, another Track, OH and equipment voyeur

On 17/05/2017 9:27 PM, Mal Rowemal.rowe@... [TramsDownUnder] wrote:
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> On 17/05/2017 8:20 PM,mcloughlin.dj@... [TramsDownUnder] wrote:

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>> And so none of the cable lines not converted to electric trams from the outset ever became electric lines, Bourke Street excepted. IIRC the board was still hoping to electrify Johnston Street (and on to Bulleen) well into the 1950s. Wasn't that the cable line (or one of them) that fed into Russell St and Lonsdale St?

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> Yes - and it was the second last line to close (counting the two Bourke St services as 'one line'.)

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>> I still marvel that Melbourne's trams survived, given the high-level hatred of them in the 1950s and 1960s and the wanton destruction of the great Sydney system and the modern system in Brisbane, which had newer trams than Melbourne when it was destroyed almost overnight in 1969 in the biggest act of civic vandalism in Australian history.

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> It's a common and probably valid belief that one of the key factors in the survival of Melbourne's trams was in fact the cable trams.

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> Whereas Sydney and (to a lesser extent) Brisbane had a lot of old tram track that needed replacement in the 1960s, much of Melbourne's track was still in quite good order - much of it having been built 20 or 30 years after the electric lines in other cities. Another contribution by the cable system was the concrete foundations they were built on - which were left in place to provide a very solid base for the electric trams.

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> Mal Rowe - thinking about a piece of writing about Melbourne track construction down the years

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