Re: St Kilda Transfers

G'day all,I've had a quick look through Victorian Railways Rules & Regulations 1919 and the General Appendix 1936 and can find no references to VR tramway operation as such.The only tramway references are to tramway level crossings and railway/tramway squares,i.e electric tramway/electric railway crossings,there are no special instructions for working St.Kilda yard in the 1936 GA,lots of other fascinating stuff though if you are a railfan,these two books wont be going back on the shelf for a while.Has anyone got Weston Langfords book of Metro station layouts?[out of print,unfortunately] it may cast some light,where is Greg King when you need him?he could probably shine some light here too.Regards to all,Peter Bruce.--- In TramsDownUnder@y..., "IS Edit" <bobmurphy2@c...> wrote:

Bill,

I've never seen a tram anywhere in the world without a basic tow coupling and many trams had on-board towbars.

Melbourne's W-2s had them under the longitudinal saloon seats. They would have been quite adequate for towing on the rail unless there was some arcane rail safety regulation which I doubt in the time period we are talking about.

Bob Murphy
----- Original Message -----
From: Bill Bolton
To: TramsDownUnder@y...
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2002 12:23 AM
Subject: Re: [TramsDownUnder] Re: St Kilda Transfers


On Mon, 18 Feb 2002 18:58:19 +1100, Kevin wrote:

> On the method of transfer I would go down on the low speed
> towing system. With an overall height of about 11ft + for
> the car and 3ft+ for the wagon they would be giving the
> loading gauge a push. So we are back to the wee hours with
> probably some type of steam motive power at low speeds
> 15mph etc. Maybe the 1500v turned off. (a la Sydney)

Two problems with conveyance on their own wheels.... the VR trams on
the whole show no evidence of couplers of any sort except for the
early period when they hauled trailers, and secondly due to the low
"buffing" height of the trams it would have been quite difficult to
arrange any form of temporary coupling to a railway vehicle or
locomotive.

This doesn't mean it didn't happen, but it would have been nowhere
near as straight forward as in NSW.

NSW had pin and bar coupling facilities on just about every tramway
vehicle and steam tram motors with buffing gear/couplers at the right
height to do the hauling... plus even some match trucks to match
tramway and railway vehicles. BTW, in NSW tramway profile vehicles
running through railway profile special work were restricted to ~4mph
and even then there were often problems.

> A history of Jolimont which I read recently did not have any mention
> of trams but they were heavily into Petrol /Diesel electric Rail Motors.

The trams were apparently maintained at Elwood and shortly after the
no 3 running shed (northern most) was added circa 1917, the No 1 shed
(southern most) became a workshop from the early 1920s.

Cheers

Bill


Bill Bolton
Sydney, Australia

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