Evening Roy and TDUers,
Nice to hear you've still got your 'Tram Conductors A Part of Melbourne' badge
Roy.
A collective of trammies pressed these badges in the King Street offices of the
ATMOEA (Tramways Union) with other trammies. Each day to keep up with demand
some of us would go to King Street for save connie meetings and to press more
badges....and on market days we'd head off to collect 'free' fruit and veges
donated by stallholders from Victoria and South Melb Markets....take some tucker
back to the depot and trammies would cook meals for trammies. Some badges we'd
sell to raise money for distribution amongst trammies short of a quid...some
we'd give away for free.

I've attached a few images of life in the Bourke Street Mall during the 33 days
trams blockade. South Depot looked after 'our' trams in the Bourke Street Mall.
As mentioned previously some of us slept in trams. There was very little
'vandilism'.....although the Bourke St Mall trams became very dirty as many city
folk and holiday makers had lunch and snacks inside stationary trams and left
rubbish on floors and under seats.

B Class tram 2020 was the most famous tram where trammies set up camp for the 33
days....in front of parliament house....2020 is another chunky yarn in it's own
right.

South Depot Trammies would do periodic tram clean up sessions in the mall. We
also hosted 'Historic Tram Tours' Some of the trammies conducting the talks on
the history of the various trams stabled in the mall are well known enthusiasts
and familiar to some TDUers....as it was January and with many people on
holidays it was easy to gather people inside trams and do approx half hour tour
sessions.

Tonights question?...who's the famous Bounds Brother in the Tram 823 photo?
Lindsay or Jeff?
Who's the enthusiast on the roof of B Class tram 2017 placing the 'save your
conductors' banner hung on the overhead electrical who earlier in the year
appeared in a TDU photo out front of a bus in Sydney for the 50th anniversary of
the last Sydney tram?

Cheers

________________________________
From: Roy Winslow roytram@...>
To: "TramsDownUnder@yahoogroups.com" TramsDownUnder@...>
Sent: Fri, 10 June, 2011 7:07:10 PM
Subject: Re: [TramsDownUnder] Re: Blockade - a prelude incident

I visited Thornbury depot a little while prior to 533 being burnt. I would
expect it was school holidays in September?? At the time there was a picket
line at the depot and I saw steel welded over the track at the entrance. IIRC
the picket of Thornbury occurred over several months prior to the great tram
strike.

As a 14 year old who did not recall riding in a W2 the gents allowed me a look
at the car as well as the one man tram conversion they were passionately
against. I recalled this was a Z but after 22 years it could have easily been an
A. I think there was more than one modern car in the depot, but can't recall if
all of them had been converted.

I recall the union guys were very happy to show a young gunzel around and were
nothing but polite. This was the same a few months later when I looked inside
some of the trams parked in the CBD. After making sure I wasn't up to no good,
they allowed me to sit in a cab of a W parked in the Bourke Street Mall (which
was a novelty by this time as modern trams had replaced W's on Bourke Street
routes).

The lines of trams just sitting there was a bit of a tourist attraction at the
time. There must be thousands of photos taken by people who wouldn't have even
noticed them if it had been business as usual.

Roy in WA who still has his 'Tram Conductors - a part of Melbourne' badge.

Sent from my iPad

On 10/06/2011, at 4:44 PM, "Campbell Booth" campbell.booth@...> wrote:

>W2 533 was firebombed at Thornbury in Dec 1989.

>Campbell

>

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