I saw many of these during my time in the trade. I would say that the tram ones were the odd ones out as most reversing ones were centre off. The DC cranes at Lucas Heights certainly had them but they were in the process of being converted to electronic AC drives whilst I was there. I arranged for some of the old equipment to be donated to STM.

The most interesting one was when I was still an apprentice. We had as a customer a small job printing shop which was not far from our shop. One of their ancient presses had been converted from DC to a wound rotor AC motor with a secondary resistance starter. The controller was a DC one that had been converted to serve its new purpose. It was proudly labelled “Sprague General Electric” which is interesting as most historical documents tend to indicate that Frank Sprague’s name was not used at all by the new company.

Interested to hear anyone’s comments on this.

Geoff O.

From: 'bblunt3473@yahoo.com' via TramsDownUnder [mailto:tramsdownunder@googlegroups.com]
Sent: Tuesday, 21 March 2023 10:54 AM
To:tramsdownunder@...
Subject: Re: [TramsDownUnder] Re: Controllers

I didn't get a close up look, but the controller handle seems to be in a centralised locking niche, suggesting operating in two directions. The are 4 cams on one side of the shaft and four on the other.

Photos taken by another participant show a wagon of some sort with twin trolley poles.

This was the motor part of the trolley.