Re: BRISBANE LIGHT RAIL / TRAMS

[garry <garry@merddyn.apana.org.au>]

David McLoughlin wrote:

> garry wrote:
>
> > Its also very interesting to note the the previous Jones who was
> Lord
> > Mayor in the mid-thirties, also started scrapping the trams - the
> only
> > difference was he saw trolley buses as the way to go. He did
> introduce
> > the BCC back into buses the first routes starting with the war.
>
> You have a mistaken view here. The first trolleybuses were circa
> 1950.
> There were only five lines. Gregory Tce No 23 (which indeed replaced
> a
> very short and steep tram line); Prospect Tce - Stanley Bridge No
> 24 (which replaced a diesel bus service); Cavendish Road No 25 (the
> only
> one to replace a main-line tram service) and Carina 8c and Seven
> Hills 8a
> which replaced diesel bus services to new suburbs.

You are the one mistaken greatly here David, I'm afraid.

What I said is completely true and fully backed by Council's own
records.

The problem was the war intervened and then post war shortages meant
the routes planned pre-war could not be implemented until 12/8/1951
when Trolley Bus 9 opened the system. (BTW, this was same day/moth
public tram operation commenced in 1885, and the Moreton Bay Tramway
Company (more or less became QR) commenced construction in 1862-who
said co-incidences don't happen.)  The original route was to go from
Gardens via Edward Street,  Leichhardt Street, Wickham Terrace,
College Road, Petrie Terrace, Milton Road, Cribb Street, River Road
(now Coronation Drive), Gailey Road, St Lucia Road (now Sir Fred
Schonell Drive to University of Queensland. There was to be a branch
to Swan Road Taringa. Opposition to overhead wires from property
owners on River Road (guess who) meant the depot that was meant to be
mid way along the route ended on a long branch that saw no regular
service - Lang Park Depot.

Also, the first trolley bus route actually replaced two tram lines -
the short Queen Street - Gardens route along Edward Street on the flat
and the former city end of the Kelvin Grove line which used to enter
the city via College Road, Leichhardt Street and Edward Street
terminating just short of Queen Street. This was not a short line but
quite a busy line serving two schools, a hospital, as well as mauch of
the then residential areaa of Spring Hill. It was scrapped in 1947
because it still operated single truck hand brake cars, on hills
almost as steep as Neutral Bay Wharf in Sydney, and had no emergency
or track bracks at all. Attempts to use more modern bogie car
air-brake  floundered when even a high set Dreadnought class grounded
while trying to turn from Upper Edward to Leichhardt Street and on
other hillcrests/gullies.

>From memory I believe the Trolley Bus chasis were actually ordered
from England just before the war commenced. Both the introduction of
Trolley buses and the completion of building the University of
Queensland were delayed by the war and the following shortages. The
man who came out from London to install the trolley buses and remain
to become assistant General Manager and patron of the Tramway Museum
was George Baker, who had been a senior person involved in trolley
busing London. They had been re-ordered in 1947-48 but not to replace
trams (except Edward Street lines), but  to replace diesel buses on
the early bus routes which had now grown in patronage.

The Cav Road line was replaced because it was in need of major
relaying, was single track. needed major extensions and was already
duplicated by a bus route. Its traffic was light so it was used as an
experiment and also provided the opportunity to provide a whole new
transport corridor along Cavenish Road to Stanley Bridge and the city.
It fitted in nicely with the Stanley Street trunk routes and also used
up the surplus trolley buses which had been laying idle because of the
Coronation Drive fiasco..

The Stanley Bridge route was to have been a tramway (originally
proposed 1891) across the Story Bridge, but because the Council didn't
"remind" the government to build it to take trams, they could never be
installed, hence the trolley buses instead. This is unlike the Grey
Street Bridge (1928) which was designed to take trams and still had
the sleepers in place until around ten years ago!.

The proposed track plan for the W'gabba Fiveways to take trams down
Main Street from all existing lines was indeed interesting. Had the
depot lines to Stanley Street and Logan Road been double tracked, it
would have been a five-ways grand union[except Logan Road to Stanley
Street East] (probably the only in the world if there's such a beast.

Jones was the Lord Mayor at that time of the Story Bridge debacle and
it is quite obvious from correspondence files, reports commissioned,
and the newspapers, that had the war not intervened, Brisbane would
have seen the last of its trams by around 1950 (some major trunk
routes might possibly have survived longer, but it is very doubtful.
Don't forget, the newest trams then were the first airbrake drop
centres and construction of the class was nearing its end and only
minor extension totalling a few chains had been built since the
Balmoral and Ashgrove extensions of 1935 although 1937 was to see
extension to Bardon, Moorooka and the building of the Doomben balloon
loop. Contrast this with the building of several major extensions each
year up to 1935 from 1925..That closure was still on the agenda as
late as 1939, one only has to read the Ttamways and Power House Annual
Report for 1939/40 p.29 -"During the year practically all relaying has
been carried out in mass concrete, with the result that the Council
has, apart from the tracks themselves, a first-class asset in concrete
roadways, irrespective of the methods of transport which may be in
existence."
This was repeated in subsequent reports during the war until 1942/3.

The same report reports the arrival of the first twelve bus chasises
and the building of the Light Street garage.

> Expansion of the tramway system continued well after the
> introduction of
> the trolleybuses, ie the Mt Gravatt extension.

That's correct, because Chandler was elected Lord Mayor post war. He
was Citizens Municipal Organisation (a front for the Queensland
Liberal Party, which he started, and very pro tram. He scrapped the
pre-war plans of Jones to replace trams with trolley buses and instead
commenced extending the tramways to the rural areas surround ing
Brisbane (as per Bundora in Melbourne) - Enoggera, Chermside, Carina
(Belmont) and Mout Gravatt. The policy had always been to build the
tramways into the bush and let development follow. These areas were
more new residential areas in the bush as trams had not been able to
be extended during war (except Stafford which was well under way
pre-war and Salisbury to munition works.

> Apart from the gregory tce and Cavendish Road tram lines, the first
> tram
> routes to be axed were the four Clem Jons (curse his name) scrapped
> on
> Christmas Eve 1963 after the very convenient arson of the Paddington
> tram
> depot

Not true, Red Hill trams were actually replaced by buses circa 1940
when the Jubilee route commenced. (They had been temporaily routed
through to Stafford, after its opening, until the services were
re-organised in 1940.. The line was then used only for trams entering
and leaving Paddington Depot for the Ashgrove line. Also the Davies
Park loop had also been abandoned around 1937. Petrie Terrace from
Caxton Street to Waterworks Road also lost its trams (possibly with
Red Hill) but more likely much earlier when Ashgrove trams were
diverted to run down Countess Street. The Petrie Terrace tracks were
still in place in the late fifties, early sixties, but cut off from
the system. Originally Kelvin Grove trams ran to Edward Street and
Ashgrove/Red Hill vis Pertie Terrace. Only depot cars used Countess
Street which is where the original depot and main workshops were
situated. It didn't rate passenger tranms because it only went past
the railway yards. All the houses were on the other two routes..

You can be forgiven for not knowing most of this David, for much of it
has come out of the BCC Transport Department archives, which I rescued
from the 1974 flood, restored and which the BTMS looked after till
this year. After 23 years of not wanting to know about us holding all
their records (some actually up to the day before flood) they suddenly
decided they wanted them back. Actually later when they demolished
Milton Workshops, we were given all the drawings and plans from
upstairs. Embarassed Council officers had to ask us for some back a
couple of days later. Inadvertantly they had even given us all the
current drawings of the buses still in use, plus the new workshops
underconstructionat Toowong!

Oh well!