I've already drawn attention, via the W7 at Whiteman Park, to the crush load capacity of Ws - very much a standee tram, whereas in Sydney the emphasis was on seats, facing forward and very frequent services by means of a gigantic fleet. So seat per hour delivery was far in advance of any other city. On a tram for tram basis though, there's no doubt that the R1 with its lateral seats has a very cluttered interior compared to this:

http://historyworks.com.au/W1017d.jpg http://historyworks.com.au/W1017d.jpg

http://historyworks.com.au/W1017c.jpg http://historyworks.com.au/W1017c.jpg

Different philosophies in different cities. If you want to talk crush loads though, there were some references in earlier years to the crush load of a coupled pair of Sydney crossbenches as being about 350, about 100 more than their official capacity! But at least 160 of those were in seats. The reversible seats in the R/R1 actually cost about 10% of seating capacity due to the greater seat pitch required.

This looks to me very much like an R1 with crush load utlising end vestibules ;) (Grassed track too!)

http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/17f603f499f9d3b9baeb1da78cee7afd?width=650 http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/17f603f499f9d3b9baeb1da78cee7afd?width=650

Sad that it was the last time.

Tony P

---InTramsDownUnder@..., <mal.rowe@...> wrote :

On 10/10/2017 9:46 PM, Tony Galloway arg@... mailto:arg@... [TramsDownUnder] wrote:

Os, O/Ps and Ps were rated at 80 seats, 48 standing, Rs had 48 seats with 80 standing, R1s 56 seats, 72 standing. So all nominally had a crush load of 128 passengers. PR1 cars had one less row of seats than an R1, being shorter, so seated 52 passengers and took about 70 standees.

That makes an interesting comparison with the Melbourne SW6 - which had either 48 or 52 seats and was rated for a crush load of 180.

Either Melbourne commuters were statistically smaller or the seating layout of the SW6 allowed more standing room. The lack of end platforms may also have given more space. I wonder if the official R class crush loads included standees on the end platforms?

I have attached a plan of the initial SW6 design - which had four double tip-over seats in each saloon. This choice may well have been influenced by the R design.
Later SW6s replaced the tip-over seats with fixed seats, making space for the longitudinal seats just inside the saloons to become triple seats and thus increase seated capacity from 48 to 52 without changing the rated crush load.
Knowledgeable fans always liked the SW6s with tip-over seats.
I think all were converted to fixed seating over time.

One feature of the R and R1 design that Melbourne would have been wise to adopt was the side windows - the sliding plate glass in Sydney is a much better and more reliable design than Melbourne's 'half drop' windows in theSW6s and later Ws.

Mal Rowe in a city that was very proud of the SW6 design