Re: [OT?] PCC controller video
  Tony Galloway

Bismarck also said “The law is like sausage - if you like it, it’s best not to know how it’s made”.

Tony G

> On 13 Aug 2017, at 12:26 am, Mick Duncankitbuny@... [TramsDownUnder] TramsDownUnder@...> wrote:

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> Gday Tony

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> As Bismark said "Politics is the art of the acheviable"

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> Tram maintenance without much money is the same

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> Cheers, Mick

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> On 12/08/2017 2:50 PM, Tony Gallowayarg@... mailto:arg@aapt.net..au [TramsDownUnder] wrote:

>> Indeed, Mick - a running tram always beats the alternative.

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>> Assuming that they did this because they had no alternative (why else would they do it?) I'd say maintenance would have to be pretty good, both to keep things running and to conserve the limited resources they had. If PCC cars were cannibalised for spares that meant carbodies were sitting around doing no more than collecting bird shit when they could have been out collecting revenue, and some bright spark did a bit of lateral thinking connecting the stack of unused K35s in the workshop to the fleet of otherwise good trams lacking controls parked outside it.

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>> I reckon a K35 in a PCC is innovation born of necessity, and the perfect antidote to the “too hard, can’t be done, take em away and scrap em, buy buses” mentality that was/is the case all too often. Alexandria tramways have a long history, and have survived against the odds, and this is an example of how they survived by using what they had on hand. Another survivor like that is the Hershey interurban in Cuba, keeping their ancient Brill cars running till they got the secondhand Barcelona cars..

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>> Still, a lot of current though.

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>> Tony G

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