Re: Boronia Station and Z,A & B class trams.

[wauer@qspr03.tuwien.ac.at (Wolfgang Auer)]

Johann Fan wrote:

>But do European operators actually take care of their
>trams and have mid-life overhauls at mid-life age?

That very much varies -- the lifetime of a tram does only marginally
depend on such mid-life overhauls, but rather on the quality in regard
to both its construction and maintenance; Tatra trams of the Communist
era are often built in a very sloppy way, but extensive overhauls tend
to make them very good vehicles for another 15, maybe 20 years.

But I think you thought of Western European large tram systems, didn't
you? Well, one of the best tram systems in the world, Zürich's, has
just seen the last trams of the 1940s disappear. Perfectly maintained,
they never needed any significant overhaul, but nevertheless ran very
much to the passengers' satisfaction. In Milano, there still is a huge
batch of Peter Witt cars (designed in the 1920s, all constructed in
pre-WW II times!) running. They must still be in a very good state,
since you simply can buy such a (functioning!) tram from the Milano
transit authorities (just write them!), as, e. g., San Francisco did
for its beloved F line. If a tram is running _there_, it _must_ be of
good quality.

My hometown, Wien (Vienna) still sees a batch of more than 400 trams
of the 1950s and 1960s running (types E and E1, the backbone of the
fleet), and most of them will survive at least into the 2nd decade of
the next century -- and I don't regret that at all.

As stated in a previous posting, the Z1s are about 30 years old in
2008 -- there's no reason why a tram shouldn't reach a lifetime of 50
years (exactly that is a reason for tram systems being quite
good-value -- you only need to replace a vehicle two or three times in
a century). Of course, I have often heard that the Z1s aren't exactly
the best tram development in the last decades -- but with the current
overhaul, which I hope to overcome the problems of this type, this
should be no issue, isn't it?

That's my very humble twopence -- please take it cum grano salis,
as I never have been to Melbourne yet.

David McLoughlin wrote:

>>They should certainly be building new low floor trams NOW, for route
>>extensions, to replace the Ws and eventually the worst of the Z1s. An
>>order for 100 low-floors placed now and delivery spread over five years
>>would come close to meeting the 2004 requirement.

Well, Siemens still is awaiting orders of its "Ulf" ("ultra low
floor") trams outside of Wien (Vienna). As far as I can judge from
here, they would meet Melbourne's needs quite well (apart from
requiring _very_ well-maintained tracks), and after some toothing
problems, they do run not so badly. But then, even stated otherwise,
they could hardly be designed as double-ended versions, making it
quite impossible to operate them im Melbourne...

Best regards from Wien (Vienna) at the other end of the world,
Wolfgang
-- 
Wolfgang Auer --------------------------------- ohne AUTO doppelt MOBIL
http://qspr03.tuwien.ac.at/~wauer/ --- mailto:wauer@qspr03.tuwien.ac.at