Re: MMTB terminology

Hey Murph, and everyone,don't remember messrooms being called gillie rooms,maybe it was used by some of our UK imports,there quite a few ex trammies from UK when I was on the job,some ex Sydney too and later still ex Brisbane.I seem to remember the out depots,Collingwood,Abbotsford St.[Abbey] and Clifton Hill having part time cleaners who were known as "aunties".750 and 751 had General Electric PCM control equipment till 1977 according to "Destination City",thence RC2.Possible nickname-Panhandlers,not sure of this though,never saw one.RC type controllers in W2s known as Coffee Grinders,I hated them,hard to get a smooth ride and you always belted your left elbow on the drivers door frame as you notched up,lovely controllers on big cars though[big cars W5 and up].Most W5s were Clydes, after Clyde Engineering built English Electric Q2CK1 controllers,great cars,real bolters but required a bit of a knack to hold ratchet switch closed as you notched them up,I loved them but most southside drivers didn't see them much,thus didn't acquire the knack.As Murph said in an earlier post they slowed down when fitted with sliding doors,looked clunkier too I reckon.Southside and Northside were pretty much tramway terms exclusively in Melb.Each had its own Superintendent,the distinction still exists socially today,the Yarra River is the divider,but is gradually breaking down.One occasional usage I remember was the use of shed for depot,as in "What shed are you at?","Hanna Street",[old name for South Melbourne].All uniformed supervisory staff were known as Braids,were in a separate union and had a separate messroom.To finish up,Murph mentioned tangoes,there were a couple of other night time short shuttles,the YoYos ran Orrong and Dandenong to Malvern,Burke Rd terminus and the Humps ran over the hump between St.Georges and Miller St and High and Dundas.Tangoes and YoYos survive today,connecting with the service car at the junction point,don't know if they still carry the nicknames though.When I was at South Melbourne 221 was kept at the bottom of 9 road,it had a No.1 truck at one end and a No.13 truck at the other,it was used for re-railing practice and was known to all as the"play" car.If you were doing a stand-by shift at South Melb. on a Saturday morning re-railing practice was a spectator sport,known,of course,as derailment practice,never ceased to amaze me how efficient the breakdown crew were considering most of them were half cut{[pissed] most of the time,you could hardly see the back wall of the running shed for beer bottles,a truly noble stack,my,how times have changed!!Derailment practice was held in the Perway yard next to the Running Depot.I realise a lot of this stuff will be common knowledge to lots of you,so if its all a bit much tell me to pull my head in,hopefully its of some interest though.Regards to all,P.Bruce.-- In TramsDownUnder@y..., "IS Edit" <isedit@g...> wrote:

M&MTB jargon would have to include buses so:

-"Bobtail" was an AEC Mk III Regal bus which had been modified for one man
operation by removing the rear door and the section it was mounted in which
reduced the rear overhang and cut 3'6" from the overall length. Bobtails
were 30' over the bumpers and one man buses were limited to 31 seats while
the two man versions of the same bus had 44 seats.

- Gilly or Gillie room: Correct me if I'm wrong Greg and Peter but I
remember hearing that term used in the M&MTB but I don't know if it was
widely used. It was widely used in the San Francisco Municipal Railway where
I also worked and I remember several ex-bus drivers from the UK knew the
word. It was the room for the drivers to have lunch, lay about, drink tea
etc.

- 'Drome Car - a tram going to Essendon Aerodrome

- Essendon cars 750 and 751 had funny controllers for many years. They had a
nickname. Can't remember it but Peter Bruce would.

- "Yapper" cars so called because they were one of the few cars in the B&MTB
where passengers could talk to drivers easily.

Bob Murphy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Nicholson" <pn1@r...>
To: <TramsDownUnder@y...>
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2001 11:46 AM
Subject: [TramsDownUnder] MMTB terminology

A small group is preparing a list of MMTB terminology;
ie words, jargon and phrases that were peculiar to the
MMTB (deceased 30 June 1983).

There are more than 400 entries already.

Seeking thoughts the more obscure ones that might have
fallen through the net.

The most recent one was "By"! (sorry we are not
talking about the trans-gender platform staff):

A real life example from a Camberwell marmalade shift
1974/1975:

"Conductor/Driver Nicholson, 817, with your bag, shunt
a big car off 10 road, put her on bang, then take 69
run at the Junction."

Does this need translation?

=====
Paul Nicholson
PO Box 301
Mitcham Victoria 3132
Australia
Phone: +61 3 9873 4249
Web site: members.tripod.com/~pn1/index.html
ICQ: 46644092

http://briefcase.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Briefcase
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