Re: memories demon driver

---God, Demon driver....
And here I have been slaving away in the other group while you are
hiding here !!!!
You just wait till Friday.
"School will be IN"

Bet when you were a kid you never raced over to a Birney car at the
terminus and pulled the rear pole down for the one man driver and
wrapped it round the cleat, and tried to get back to the kerb and
your EMPIRE cycle made in Christchurch as if nothing had happened
before he changed ends.
My big brother tells the story of the times the schoolboys when on
the way home from the City Tech back to Westown, the boys would all
get down the back and start bouncing up and down. The Birney would by
then be streaking down Devon Street at about 20mph. Birneys never
knew how to oscillate vertically but were very good at doing it
laterally.
With the hairy legged schoolboys going up and down and the car going
side to side something had to give, and the pole would leave the
wire being snatched off as the car was at its highest bounce, by the
EARL patent trolley catcher.
The red and cream juggernaught would abruptly cease all forward motion
and the long suffering motorman would head for the back of the tram
to reset the catcher and replace the pole on the wire.
In the back the boys would be whistling tunes learned that day at
school or looking about the floor for a remembered lost coin or
something. If the motorman had had a bad day the "innocent young lads"
would find themselves faced with the daunting prospect of a walk up
the Morley Street hill and questions from the Head master when they
got back to school.

WGB





In TramsDownUnder@y..., "demondriver44" <demondriver44@y...> wrote:

Lord,Lord,I am a poor sinner,I always thought that the W2 was the
absolute pinnacle of human achievement,I confess I was wrong,I have
been worshipping false Gods,103a please forgive me I have seen the
error of my ways.Way back in 1967 the first person to invite me up
the front to actually drive a tram was a feller called Tommy

Cross.He

was an ex Sydney trammie,also bus and trolley bus driver."Come up
here son",so up there I duly went,he stepped back from the

controller

and it was all mine,admittedly for quite a short time but better

than

nothing,my first taste of 600v.It turned out that Tommy had started
his tramway career as an engine-cleaner/conductor at Cronulla on

the

steam tramway in the 1930s.He and Bob Murphy had the most complete
street transport careers of all the people I know and Tommys was
about 40 years longer, he was also a veteran of Tobruk,Crete and
other vicious WW2 campaigns and had tales to tell.He was a trammie
through and through and a great bloke to work with.When he started
work he would have worked with blokes who were there in the

1890s,in

the very early days of street public transport.In some ways it

seems

prehistoric but its not so long ago really.Regards to all,time to
crank it up again,knock the switches in and run the first car out

its

been too quiet for too long, Peter Bruce. --- In
TramsDownUnder@y..., "WALTER Bennett" <wgbtttco@b...> wrote:

These shots were taken at Parramatta Park before it was

overhauled

at Thirlemere then subsequently burnt .

I understand reconstruction is well under way.

I have some shots of seam tram 1 which was at the Powerehouse

Museum for some years but has now disappeared.

In my opinion No 1 had a nicer livery.]

I will have to find these....................

WGB

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