Re: TAN: Blackpool (was Re: Melbourne, Christchurch)

One last question, if you don't mind, before we return to Oz trams, Andrew.

With equal diameter wheels and power to only one of them, was the truck king
pin offset to put more weight on the drive wheels?

If not did they have terrible traction problems?

RT Murphy
----- Original Message -----
From: <[email protected]>
To: >

None of the English Electric-trucked Blackpool cars was anything other
than 2-motor, but they are equal-wheel trucks. Two motors matched the
British passion for economy in everything; there were very few
four-motor double-truck cars in the UK until the 1930s, and there were
some terrible howls of anguish in Glasgow Corporation (which still
generated its own power then) after its 152 four-motor "Coronation"
cars of 1937-1941 sent the Tramways Department power bill sky-high.

One of the reasons (but by no means the only reason) for the short
life of Blackpool's "Corornation" or "Spiv" cars of 1952-54 (304-328)
was their current consumption--again four-motor cars in an otherwise
2-motor fleet.The Corporation howled at the power bill, made even more
horrendous by the fact these otherwise lovely cars were horribly
overweight and were center-entrance and so not amenmable to being made
one-man operated.

Forgive me for saying so, but surely this Blackpool esoterica might
better be addressed on a site that's not devoted to NZ/OZ? How about
the real Blackpool experts at the Fylde Tramway Society (tramway.
com/fts)? Or on the other Yahoo traction or tramway history groups?

Andrew D. Young

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