On 3/9/21 6:29 am, David McLoughlin wrote:
> The speed of the trams on curves through such a complex set of

> junctions is also instructive. Why is Australia so timid?  Sydney is

> even worse than Melbourne; I noted during my June visit that despite

> not stopping for facing points, the new Sydney trams crawl through

> junctions and round curves.

>

Sydney's problem is the trams. All the points on the western line (and I
assume the eastern lines too) have facing point locks and point proving
signals. (And rather stupidly facing crossovers instead of trailing in
at least one location, but that's another issue).

When the IWLR extension opened to Dulwich Hill they were zipping through
the facing crossover points at line speed until and an  issue was
noticed with excessive wheel wear. The exact issue was never stated, but
a permanent speed restriction was eventually placed on all sets of points.

 I assume the raised check rails were ripping too much metal off the
backs of the hybrid wheels of the CAF cars.

This particular issue wont affect the Citadis as they don't have hybrid
wheels and the eastern lines points are all flat 'tramway' points, but
for consistency the same rules apply all over. Some drivers are
qualified for both routes and car types , so presumably they want
harmonised rules.

The speed through curves is a car type vs infrastructure issue and I
also consider this a design failure. Made even worse on the CESLR as the
coupled sets are so long, by the time the end of the 60m set has cleared
the curve the front is approaching the next speed restriction!. Go
through curves too fast in your fix-truck track wreaker and you will go
through lots of wheel sets and need to replace rails too often.

This is already showing the CESLR - last time I was at Devonshire
Street, the curve at the bottom of Devonshire street at the railway were
already showing rail head damage, with quite a bite already taken out of
the railhead. And this is with the Citadis being fitted with onboard
flange lubricators.