Re: Hawthorn - answers and questions

On 26 Nov 2002 at 9:05, Bill Bolton wrote:

Its not obvious from the aerial view but there is a falling gradient in
the street at the depot "tram level" enterance,. The depot tracks are
on the level but that means they are falling further below the street
grade the further east they run. It would have been, at best, very
difficult to organise a direct bi-directional access to the depot
tracks from the street.

Okay, so my surprise was exaggerated. I was aware of the climb up to Power
Street but was thinking, what a perfect situation for a bi-level depot like
Mount Pleasant in Vancouver. Not, however, stopping to think that this would
have been quite unnecessary for the HTT or that all you'd have in this case
would be two floors each accessible only from opposite directions.

As to the junction at Power Street and Wallen Road, in the days of
relatively light road traffic, it would have been a hard to justify
the expensive of providing the additional special work for curves to
support a few non-revenue car movements a day.

That one, I'm not quite so ready to concede. At the very least, one would have
thought that a crossover just east of Power Street would have paid for itself
in short order.

For that matter, since the HTT's main line was via Swan Street and the Hawthorn
Bridge service was nothing but a branch, what was the point of the curve
eastward? Simply because that was the way the horse trams had run? Or did the
Hawthorn service at one time continue farther east?

Don




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