Re: Perth D Car
  Bill Bolton

From: Mick Duncan kitbun@...>
Date: Monday, August 16, 2004 6:40 pm

> It looks like the D cars had Tomlinson couplings,

> and in theory,if they had PCM control,could run in

> muliple with a "H" or "P"


There was no standard "pin configuration" for the electrical connections on a Tomlinson coupler, so the chance that any two trams from different operators, even with the same type of MU equipment, would work together are negligable.

There are also other parameters which could be set differently on the master controllers, so again having the same basic type of MU equipment was no guarantee of interoperability.

MU interoperability between the cars of different operators requires an alignment of technical configuration standards... this did occur in a few places in the US and Europe where operators shared tracks but there was no incentive for it here where the trams (and electric rail) systems were separated by hundreds, or thousand, of kilometres.

Cheers,

Bill

Bill Bolton
Sydney, Australia