- Subject: Re: Streetcar track restoration in Dallas
- From: David McLoughlin <davemcl@REMOVEiprolink.co.nz>
- Date: Wed, 07 Apr 1999 13:52:13 +1200
- Newsgroups: misc.transport.urban-transit, ba.transportation
- Organization: Remove REMOVE to reply
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WooF wrote:
> It was a shock to compare the excellent maintenance of the Dallas
> system with that of San Francisco's Market Street Railway, whose
> rolling stock and track were old and tired even before WWII hit.
> Interestingly, the California Street Cable Railroad was in much
> better shape than the cable lines of the Market Street Ry.
I make this kind of comparison with the tramway (streetcar) systems I
knew as a kid in Melbourne and Brisbane in Australia.
The Brisbane tramway system was closed in 1969 in one of the biggest
acts of civic vandalism in Australia's history. This system's newest
trams were just FIVE YEARS OLD when the then Lord Mayor Clem Jones axed
them. The track was almost wholly in post-WWII mass concrete and was in
excellent condition. The trams were fast, popular and well used by the
Brisbane public and covered most of the city and suburbs.
By comparison, in Melbourne at the time, the newest tram had been built
way back in 1956, much of the track was still pre-war and there wasn't a
single tram even with fluorescent lights (which most of the Brisbane FM
models, numbers 400-554, had).
As it happened, Melbourne modernised after 1969, and has so far put 432
new trams into service since 1975 (with 100 more soon to be ordered) and
has opened many new routes and modernised the tracks. But Melbourne
still has about 50 pre-1956 trams that are older than many of the trams
Brisbane scrapped in 1969.
When I think of the lovely modern tramway system Brisbane had in 1969
and think what might have been had it survived just four more years
(when the "energy crisis" would have ensured its survival, as happened
in Melbourne), I weep.
I stand to be corrected, but I do not believe, outside of Copenhagen,
Mexico City and Hamburg (all of which were on the way out in 1969), that
there has been any modern tramway system of the very large size of
Brisbane's totally scrapped since 1969 anywhere in the world.
David McLoughlin
Auckland New Zealand