Re: Melbourne's Icons (was Melbourne's Anti-tram Lord Mayor)

[David McLoughlin <davemcl@REMOVEiprolink.co.nz>]

David Langley wrote:
> 
> John Engleman wrote:
> 
> > Maybe the Ws were upgraded to chopper control at the same time the air
> > compressors were replaced with flywheels.   Remember that posting?
> > Where, oh where, do some of these ideas come from?
> >
> 
> Was that in the same posting as the one about batteries in trams in order
> that the ugly overhead could be removed at curves and junctions.
> 

When I lived in Wellington, an Australian woman who'd just moved there
told me one day that her spring-operated bus had run out of power on her
way to work that morning, and the driver had got out, gone round to the
back of the bus and wound it back up again.

On further inquiry I elicited the fact she had been on a trolleybus (a
vehicle she had never seen before; well, she *was* from Sydney) and that
the poles had come off the wires... the "winding" noise she heard from
the back of the bus was the driver resetting the retrievers. But it was
hard to explain it to her.

I kid you not.

David McLoughlin
Auckland New Zealand