Hi, Mal, and other TDU-ers!

How about Ballarat 36 ran in Swanston Street about the time of Ballarat closure in 1971. Then Ballarat 40 ran in Flinders Street and Wellington Parade in the early 1990’s for a transport cavalcade (I think!). One of the Ballarat Tramway Museum’s single truckers also ran in Flinders/Wellington. And didn’t SPER’s Peter Witt Milan tram do some runs in Melbourne?

How many are we up to now?

Cheers!

Len Millar

From: Mal Rowe
Sent: Saturday, March 09, 2024 2:31 PM
To:tramsdownunder@...
Subject: Re: [TramsDownUnder] MMTB record cards

On 09/03/2024 13:54, Hal Cain wrote:

Another interesting question: without including cable trams (dummies or trailers), horse-drawn trams or Victorian Railways trams on VR tracks: now that there's a pause in tram building, with completion of the recent E class, how many electric trams have actually run on MMTB tracks? (I'm not forgetting the imported Sydney scrubbers, 10W and 11W; and did VR54 ever turn a wheel for the MMTB outside Preston Workshops?)

There's a pretty good summary in Destination City, 5th edition on pages 126 -127

Up to the last of the Ws, the number is 1040 less 10 (Y1s cancelled) less 38 (CW5s cancelled) = 992

Zs and As reused numbers 1 to 230 = 230

There were 132 B class, 41 C class, 59 D class and now 100 E class.

So I make that 1590 passenger trams.

If you want to include 'visiting trams' you could add a few more: Bendigo 17, Sydney 1808, Eurotram 018, Combino Plus C008 - and probably VR50 and VR51 which would have been tested on the tracks after the MMTB converted them to one man operation! Have I missed any?

Without going into details, I reckon the total number of operational service trams has been 23 plus a few trailers.

VR 54 never turned a wheel for the MMTB because it never got any wheels. Only 52 and 53 were fitted with MMTB No 15 trucks.

Mal Rowe whose narrow tidy mind would prefer the highest passenger car number to be 1602 rather than 6100