- Trams Downunder

Re: Sydney Bus in hole disrupts trams and other goodies
Michael Giddey

Dudley referred to body weakness in the PR1 conversions. It was the one and only PR conversion ( car 1691) that pre-dated the PR1's that suffered from this problem. It retained the outward appearance of a P car but had a narrow centre aisle cut through the seats to allow for the use of conductresses. When transferred to Tempe Depot it often ran coupled with other P cars and the conductors generally preferred to collect fares from the footboards rather than squeeze through the narrow aisle.

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________________________________
From:tramsdownunder@... tramsdownunder@...> on behalf of Dudley Horscroft transitconsult@...>
Sent: Tuesday, 12 October 2021 12:34 PM
To:tramsdownunder@... tramsdownunder@...>
Subject: Re: [TramsDownUnder] Sydney Bus in hole disrupts trams and other goodies

Thanks, Brian

Dudley

On 12/10/2021 11:13 pm, 'Brian Blunt' via TramsDownUnder wrote:
Re the PR1:
The problems with them I understand was the high floor and narrow doorways, along with high costs.

Brian.

Brian Bblunt3473@...mailto:Bblunt3473@yahoo.com

On 12 Oct 2021, at 23:10, Brian Blunt bblunt3473@...>mailto:bblunt3473@yahoo.com wrote:

The the R towing. The set would have needed to reverse at Kensington Junction so the trailing car would have needed air pressure to proceed in the other direction?

Brian Bblunt3473@...mailto:Bblunt3473@yahoo.com

On 12 Oct 2021, at 23:05, Dudley Horscroft transitconsult@...>mailto:transitconsult@ozemail.com.au wrote:

Three points come to mind. TfNSW reckoned that grass tracks would be impractical for the 'new' light rail. Obviously they hadn't see or heard that the Sydney Tramways needed flamethrower cars to keep the weeds down!

Next there was a shot of one R class (or R1) towing another on the way to the works. Both had their trolley poles up. Was the second car being driven or towed dead? If dead, why was the pole up?

And the remarkable strength of the P class cars with their bodywork surviving after being rolled over several times leads me to consider that the alleged weakness of the body on the PR1 cars after cutting through a centre aisle, and plating in the sides was a furphy to cover that doing this conversion would have meant keeping a good tramway system a lot longer when all they wanted to do was to get rid of it.

Regards

Dudley

On 12/10/2021 7:03 pm, Greg Sutherland wrote:

Some weeks back there was discussion on this group re the 'bus in the hole".

Here is a relevant video with extra goodies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvcnFjjo4qc

Greg