I moved from Canberra to Banora Point in 2013. For the first year or so I watered my front lawn when the weather was dry. After a bit, I found out that the lawn did not need watering. For about 10 years now I have not watered the lawn, and it is still there. So I can assure everyone that it is not necessary to water lawn track on the Broadbeach South extension.
The question of mowing the tracks does not occur. The same as I noted in Croydon, where the double deck buses pruned the street trees so they adopted an inverted "L" shape - twigs that stuck out too far were discouraged by the passing buses - would occur with lawn track - grass that grew too high would be discouraged by their growing points being damaged by the underside of trams. So the grass will be kept to a normal height, and there will be no grass cuttings to create problems on tracks.
The problem you had with East Burwood is, as you say, due to grass adjacent to the tracks being mown and not collected by the mower. So, either there is no grass adjacent to the tracks that needs to be mown, or mowers which collect the cuttings must be used.
Open track is clearly acceptable on GCLR 2 as the rails are, surely, insulated from the sleepers. With Pandrol clips and presumably all other fastenings, there is an insulated pad in the system which electrically separates rail and sleeper.
Open track should not be used on Broadbeach to Burleigh as this is median strip and the tram tracks will be required to be used by emergency vehicles and by other vehicles in an emergency. So electrical isolation is desirable (unless done by YT contractors and engineers). This would be done by laying a heavy plastic sheet under the rails or sleepers to isolate them from the earth. See attachments showing brand new track is Basel, taken some years ago. One shows there is a continuous concrete base on which a plastic sheet is laid, with the rails on top of the sheet. The other shows the track on the right ready for the concrete inserts, and the track on the left with concrete inserts in place, ready for addition of soil and grass seed.
Regards
Dudley Horscroft
----- Original Message ----- From: "'Richard Youl' via TramsDownUnder" tramsdownunder@...>
To: tramsdownunder@...>
Sent: Monday, May 20, 2019 2:40 PM
Subject: Re: [TramsDownUnder] Canberra apartment buyers told light rail will get them to the city in 10 mins.
You raise some interesting points there Mark.
Perhaps the real reason for rejecting the concept of grassed track is that nobody wants to pay for the upkeep of watering and mowing where required. What may need to be added to the mowing cost is the track cleaning afterwards.
Years ago when I was on the job and had a daytime two-way radio, occasionally a call would go out for a scrubber car to clean the East Burwood track as the grass adjacent to the track on the reservation had just been mown and now trams were slipping and sliding all over the place.
Despite the fine looking photos of grassed track in Europe being published here from time to time, not all systems are pristine.
Just last night I was reading a recent copy of Tram 2000 from Belgium and noticed this photo. It shows a driver-training tram at the Jette Cemetery terminus and clearly watering the track was about as important there as near the Box Hill terminus.
With costs being a problem at the GC and Canberra, one option which pig-headedness can be opposing would be to use the latest track laying methods used in Melbourne where a concrete base is used with dirt infill and bitumen on top, but that may upset their concept of electrically isolating track from Earth.
That current leakage problem obviously does not affect the Open Ballast system used on the Stage 2 GC extension. One has to ask the question as to why open ballast is OK on this extension, but not OK for the segregated (from motor traffic) track to run Broadbeach South to Burleigh. Surely they are not paving it so that errant pedestrians are less likely to trip over?
And the same question could be posed about Canberra.
One should also ponder the question as to who is mandating the paved track? The customers (governments) or the tenderers anxious for some reason to pad out the cost of the contract?
Richard
> On 20 May 2019, at 13:28, Mark Skinner emessk@...> wrote:
>
> Since the money promised by one political party (and not by the other) is now off the table, it might be a bit longer than ten minutes.
>
> I'm a little confused though. I was in Canberra a few weeks ago and coincidentally, cough, stayed in a hotel near the tramline. Does anyone here have any idea why they used concrete track, rather than open ballast, or open ballast with a grass surface?
>
> Maybe they could use open ballast track with grass surface on the proposed extension. It might save the $100m lost on Saturday, plus looking more appealing is likely to get approval from those who are concerned about the visual impact so close to Parliament House. Any list members have some knowledge here?
>
> Mark Skinner
>
> On Mon, 20 May 2019, 8:00 am Greg Sutherland, gregsutherland@... mailto:gregsutherland@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
>
> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-20/canberra-geocon-apartments-light-rail-to-city-in-10-minutes/11128076 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-20/canberra-geocon-apartments-light-rail-to-city-in-10-minutes/11128076
>
>
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