Re: Z1 Car No. 1 (trying again)

[Dave McL <davemcl@AXE*THISiprolink.co.nz>]

John Duncan McCallum wrote:
 
>All Z1 and Z2 trams originally had one trolley retriever and
> one
> rope 'catcher'. As stated, they were not maintained properly, and were
> replaced with catchers from the A1 class after they were converted to
> pantograph operation.

Failure to maintain retrievers properly is not confined to Melbourne.
The trolleybuses in Wellington here in New Zealand all have retrievers,
but I've hardly ever seen them work properly. The poles come off the
wires and just bang into the overhead. A lot of the K&M special work
(turnouts etc) installed in the 1980s has had to be removed because it
wasn't robust enough to take the constant battering it got from dewired
trolleypoles.

Interestingly, the Wellington retrievers nowadays are "left hand
retrievers," ie, they are designed so the driver pulls the rope to reset
them to the left, to the kerb, rather than to the right (into the
traffic) like all previous NZ and I believe all those used in Australian
trolleybuses. The right-hand ones of course came from the US and were
designed for driving on the wrong side of the road.

David McLoughlin
Auckland New Zealand