Mal suspects that his <guess about the Hobart sprinkler / scrubber car being in storage was probably wrong>.
On the contrary, it appears in many photographs of Moonah depot, languishing right where the recent photographic contributions of 'anonymous' show.
The Hobart sprinkler was lashed up from all sorts of hand-me-downs, including an 1893 Siemens truck. But this was not the only Siemens relic to be re-cycled. In the photograph attached to Mal's most recent "Hobart in the early 1950s" post, three bow collectors appear in-line overlaying each-other, the first belonging to the sprinkler. This type collector was obtained from Siemens in 1913 when the original steel running wire was being replaced with copper wire. It's recognisable by the 'cross-over' member interposed between the sides of the collector frame, and the absence of a counterweight beneath the pan to keep it parallel with the running wire.
Another oddity was its controller whose origin is not certain. Cutting up through the notches required rotation in the opposite direction to conventional British/American controllers.
This was not the only contrary operational challenge for Hobart tram drivers. The original fleet of Siemens trams had the controller handle in the driver's right hand and the brake handle in his left hand.
The opposite applied to trams built after about 1902, but bearing in mind that the last of the 1893 Siemens trams weren't pensioned off until 1924, there was a considerable period of left hand/right hand overlap for drivers to contend with.
Returning to the longevity of the sprinkler, by 1947/8 streets carrying tram lines had been sealed, putting the sprinkler out of business and consigning it to years of inactivity at Moonah depot.
As for the depot road numbering, a likely explanation is this...
The land on which the Moonah depot was established had been acquired by the Hobart Electric Tramway Company, and the 4-road Moonah depot was eventually constructed by its successor The Hobart Municipal Tramways. For whatever reason the tram shed was located at the southern extremity of the allotment leaving space for eventual expansion of the depot building northwards. This never happened, however a single outdoor line was laid adjacent to the depot in a similar fashion to what occurred later at the Ballarat tram depot, the new line there becoming known as 'O-road'.
A second outdoor road was also constructed at Moonah leaving sufficient area available for a third outdoor road but this never materialised.
Showing commendable foresight, the 6 under-cover roads were assigned D to I, leaving A to C available for possible future expansion.
The Moonah depot was later equipped with a mercury-arc rectifier, claimed in the local newspaper to be Australia's first 'automatic DC supply', the meaning of this probably only apparent to those readers familiar with AC/DC conversion.
Roger Greenwood
-----Original Message-----
From:tramsdownunder@... [mailto:tramsdownunder@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mal Rowe
Sent: Friday, 15 June 2018 11:02 AM
To:TramsDownUnder@...
Subject: [TramsDownUnder] Re: Hobart in the early 1950s
On 7/06/2018 1:30 PM, Mal Rowe wrote:
> By the time of the photo it would have been fitted with scrubber gear,
> and was probably in storage at the time of the photo.
This next photo from our anonymous donor suggests that my guess about the Hobert sprinkler / scrubber car being in storage was probably wrong.
The attached pic looks to have been made at the same time and shows the scrubber with other trams behind it, as well as a double decker (probably 38) in the depot.
If the car is 38, that pushes the date back to before 1947/8, when iot was converted to a single decker.
I'm puzzled by the depot road numbering - under cover depot roads go from D to I - and presumably the outside roads were B and C ... where's A road?
Mal Rowe - looking for advice from the deep south
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