February 17th, 1972 was a very wet day ... as the days before had been.

But at about 5pm on the 17th, "the heavens opened' over the centre of
Melbourne and the big barrel drain under Elizabeth St couldn't cope.

The results was flooding of the inner city in the evening peak and over
100 trams out of service due to water damage.

Here's a pic of one of those cars in Flinders St ... just outside the
famous shoe shop (more of that later).

http://tdu.to/FlindersSt_1972-2_tmsv.jpg

The pic is scanned from a slide I bought from the TMSV soon after and is
posted with permission as "from my collection".
--
Mal Rowe in Melbourne