Re: Wellington trolleybus news, Footscray trams and RC Drummond
IS Edit
Thursday, March 7, 2002 11:41 AM
Brent,
Glad to hear things are moving along on new trolley
buses. Pics of the equipment and bits when you can, please.
I presume you know about the ammo and explosives
factories that were the main reasons for the existence of the Footscray-Moonee
Ponds tram line.
And there's a funny little story about the points
where the Footscray tram diverges from the West Maribyrnong line in Raleigh
Road. I stood for union delegate at Essendon Depot after being there for about
six months. Jimmy Banks had had enough by then. Another guy won who had been
there 25 years. At his first union meeting at the depot after the election he
said his bit about the social club etc and was ready to wind the meeting up when
I asked if I could have the floor. He and I got on quite well. He said sure.
I had done some figures and told the guys that the
manual points in Raleigh Road had been flipped by hand 687,000 times since World
War II "and that doesn't count weekends". That includes rain or shine, it
includes older drivers who have trouble getting in and out of the cars etc etc.
That gave them the irrits and I proposed we set a date 3 months or so later,
after which "no member shall operate those points manually under any
circumstances unless they have been converted for automatic
operation".
I went to the Depot "Master" office after the
meeting and enquired as to when I would be going to bus driver's training
school, since I was not going to be delegate and needed the money. I was no. 22
on the list and was told probably 18 months.
The next morning I was called in to the Depot
Master's office. Traffic Superintendent Robert C. Drummond was on the phone but
wouldn't speak directly to me. He asked questions through the Depot Master
Laurie Cummins who hated his guts, but was doing his bidding.
"What happens if we can't electrify the points
before the deadline?" Obviously they knew who was responsible for the
resolution. You've got three months, I said. You've got scores of automatic
points on the system and there's nothing special about this one. "But what if we
have a technical hitch," he said. If you do, I told him, you tell me six
weeks before the deadline and I will arrange to have the bits made in the US and
flown out here at the expense of the M&MTB. That, of course, put
him in an impossible situation and threw in a bit of cultural cringe to rub salt
in the hypothetical wound. He tried once more, "What if, when all is said and
done, we can't get the points converted?" I told Laurie, "We're reasonable
people here (at Essendon Depot hahahahahaha). If you can't pull it together and
there is a legitimate reason for your failure to produce the goods, you talk to
me and I will propose a change to the members". That was really what
RC Drummond wanted to hear. I did have a power base at Essendon.
The next morning I reported in for a spread shift
and Laurie called me into the office yet again, and handed me some papers and
said, "You're going to bus driver's school. Hop on the tram and go out to
Hawthorn". That was off the bottom of a list of 22 people supposedly waiting for
course openings in the order of their application to go drive
buses.
Three months later I was working the West
Maribyrnong tram line with a bus on Sunday, a long standing practice and one
which made bus drivers the aristocrats of the working class in the M&MTB
(penalty rates helped give us significantly higher income than trammies) I
noticed that the contact pan was in place on the overhead at the points in
Raleigh Road but the wires were tied off.
It was not hooked up.
RC Drummond was trying it on with the workers, as
usual. He did that kind of stuff all the time.
The next morning I was in Footscray driving a Dynon
Road run and saw a Dubliner named Ray Cullen just climbing out of the motorman's
can on the Footscray tram at the terminus there. I jumped off my bus, left in
the middle of the street and walked over to him and asked him if he had followed
a West Maribrynong tram out Raleigh Road. He said he had and I called him a scab
bastard for coming to Footscray because he had manually operated the points
after the cut-off date.
He said, huh? And I told him about the date and the
shit hit the fan when he went back to Essendon Depot. I think they called a
stopwork or threatened to and the overhead crew went out and hooked up the
contact pan straight away. Drummond had been waiting to see what would happen
when they missed the deadline we had set.
That's the kind of arsehole that RC Drummond
was.
I'm glad I played a key part in axing that SOB.
There was a change of government and the new Labor Transport Minister Steve
Crabb invited me up to Parliament House for a conversation on the way forward
with the Tramways. I was, at that time, also the Secretary of the Tram and Bus
Travellers Association, and had been involved with the ALP and Steve, a charming
and very bright Scottish actuary, on the run up to the election.
I told him he would have to fire RC Drummond
or he would never have a chance for any industrial harmony. He asked why and I
gave him a list of 10 unforgivable vindictive, petty, destructive things
Drummond had done, and the names and telephone numbers of people active in the
union movement and/or with the ALP who could corroborate my account of
those incidents. That lunch was on a Tuesday. I saw Drummond at Victoria
Market on the Friday and he told me he was gone. I personally liked him, he was
very cluey and a magician with timetables but he had the manners of Attila the
Hun.
His leaving didn't solve the systemic problems and
with the ALP Transport Policy Committee totally dominated by Socialist Left ALP
factions, the whole public transport scene turned into a strike ridden farce and
brought Kennett to power and he Jeffed them quick smart. I'm not impressed with
that result so far, either.
Bob Murphy
----- Original Message -----From: Brent EffordSent: Thursday, March 07, 2002 9:11 PMSubject: [TramsDownUnder] Wellington trolleybus newsTwo quick snippets of news from the Trolleybus Capital:
1 The Wellington Regional and City Councils have decided to push ahead with
completing the Lambton Hub, and not wait for Transfund to come up with the
rest of the money. This means that the temporary trolleybus terminus shown
in the photo I attached (with difficulty) the other day will be replaced
sooner rather than later (maybe by the end of this year). Construction
should restart within days.
2 I visited my buddy Graeme Butler, the trolleybus design engineer, at the
workshops on Tuesday. His end of the new trolleybus project is making good
progress, but Designline, the bus builders, don't seem to have started work
on the prototype yet. Graeme is down at Ashburton now to give them a
hurry-up, but clearly the body prototype will not be on the road here next
month as originally planned. The body prototype will have generally existing
electrical gear in a new low-floor body. There will be a second prototype
which will be an existing Mk 2 trolleybus retrofitted with a new-generation,
largely NZ made, electronic control system and other fittings like pole
bases with pneumatic retrievers. A pair of the latter are already in the
workshops, obtained from China. Graeme has already spotted a number of
design improvements he intends to make to them. I will post a photo or two
as soon as I get time. The 30 production vehicles (if ordered) will replace
the Mk1 trolleybuses, using their motors and some chassis components, with
vehicles with new bodies and new control equipment.
PS - thanks to contributors for the Footscray map and reminiscences.
Whenever I am in Melbourne I do a round tram and train trip via Footscray.
It is interesting to see how such an "odd" tram line originated.
Cheers,
Brent Efford
TechMedia Services
Co-ordinator, Transport 2000+ NZ
PO Box 2626, Wellington 6015
New Zealand
[email protected]
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