I have been asking for documentary evidence that Bolte cancelled 1041 to 1070. Or, as you put it, " was reportedly enraged by it"
the conversion of the Bourke Street routes. But no takers. Nothing about it in his biography, so I can only surmise that Bolte -
disliked by political opponents - was blamed for something he had nothing to do with. Not unusual for premiers!

Regards

Dudley Horscroft
----- Original Message -----
From: "mcloughlin.dj@gmail.com [TramsDownUnder]" TramsDownUnder@...>
To: TramsDownUnder@...>
Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2017 8:20 PM
Subject: [TramsDownUnder] Re: Russell St [Was: Glenhuntly - 1957 and 2017]

> Mal Rowe wrote:

>

>> However, the cable trams did pass the site of the old Russell St Police Headquarters until April 1939 - just before construction

>> of the Russell St building began in 1940.

>

> One of my earliest memories is of my father showing me workmen digging up cable tram tracks; either in Lonsdale Street or Russell

> St. This was obviously many years after the cable trams had gone.

>

> I think the MMTB left the rails in situ as it would not then require an act of Parliament to install electric tracks. This is how

> they got away with replacing the Bourke St bus routes with electric trams 15 years after the last cable tram ran.

>

> But Bolte arrived on the scene at the time of that conversion and was reportedly enraged by it; cancelling the production of 1041

> to 1070 and ensuring that no further trams -- or tram lines -- were built until after he retired 18 years later.

>

> 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?

>

> 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.

>

> david mcl, now in Wellington, surprised to see the famous Russell St police HQ abandoned on returning to Melbourne in 2009 for

> three busy years

>