Sad news Paul—his publications were legendary.
Andrew Cook.
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From: pn1 via TramsDownUnder tramsdownunder@...>
Sent: Sunday, 5 May 2024 12:45 PM
To:tramsdownunder@... tramsdownunder@...>
Subject: [TramsDownUnder] Ian G Cooper (1941-2024)
Whilst overseas last week, I was saddened to hear of the death of Ian Cooper of Hobart – a great mate of mine since 1967 and a highly respect tram historian. He was 83.
Ian died after a long illness. He was born and raised in Hobart and was trained as a statistician. Ian enjoyed a long career in public administration and later in the bus industry. Like many of his era, he spent some time early in his career working in the United Kingdom. In the late 1960s he moved from Hobart to Canberra where he spent many years in senior roles in the planning area of the ACTION bus service. He later moved on to private bus management.
Ian was instrumental in the saving of Hobart tram 141 and through the years wrote several titles on trams and trolleybuses in Tasmania. He was also a regular contributor to various trams and general transport journals and publications.
Ian married late in life and after retirement moved back to his hometown Hobart where he had planned to research further areas of local transport history but his efforts were cut short by the onset of a debilitating illness. In his married life, Ian was known as Tim but almost everyone in the transport fraternity continued to know him as Ian or sometimes among his closer buddies by his middle name, Gollan.
I first met Ian while exploring the Tasmanian trolleybus systems in 1967. He was groomsman at my wedding in 1975 and we remained close friends through the following decades. We spent a day on the trams in Melbourne in 2016 and it was clear his health wasn’t the best. Ian spent his last years in an aged care facility on Hobart’s eastern shore. I visited him there in 2021. Ian was very sick and couldn’t recognise me. Sadly, I knew that would be the last time our paths would cross.
Paul Nicholson
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