Swing Door and Taits
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- Опубліковано 29 жов 2024
- Due to the condition of the Newport Workshops building, the condition of the cars not destroyed by fire is uncertain, but of the cars identified in this video, only 107 M, probably the most significant of all the preserved electric cars, was totally, or almost so, destroyed. This video shows 3 separate outings, but the reason for the last one is unknown to me.
- Наука та технологія
Remember the red rattlers esp from the 70s,they had a charm about them,loved sticking my head out the windows watching the signals change,esp on the 3 car service Altona to Newport
😊👍
I remember the Taits. This video brought home a flood of memories. The interior of the Tait with all the woodwork, the long light fixtures in the ceiling, the clanging of the steel handles, the sound of the motors and the sound of the air compressors when stopped at a station....lucka-lucka-lucka-lucka-lucka-lucka-lucka-lucka-lucka-mmmmmmmm...brought it all back.
When I was working in Ascot Vale in the mid 70's, the Taits were running along side the Harris trains and at some point much later the silver trains were introduced.
As I recall, all three types ran side by side for a while because I remember that on a cold frosty winter morning I would dread seeing a Harris train parked at Broady station because the Harris trains were all steel and aluminium and they were BLOODY cold.
The Taits had no heating but because they were timber they were warmer as soon as they filled up with passengers.
Back from Ascot Vale to Broady in the evenings in the Taits, they had the sliding doors and they were so crowded I often had to stand in the open doorway and hang on to the roof lip (gutter). Thanks for the memories.
+Ellesmere Wildwood
I'm glad that you liked the video. They were trains with character. Being just an occasional visitor to Melbourne, I did not know about Harris trains on cold mornings. Thanks. I may have some Tait and Harris silent movie to post later.
Some good news has come that preserved Tait Set has returned to operational status and has been running around Melbourne just this last weekend
Yes, good news, and I have watched some of the various video clips of its runs on UA-cam.
Thanks for this. Especially rare to see the interiors and sounds of a Tait carriage even though it was by far the most familiar aspect to people who remember them.
Some confusion about what the centenary was then. St Albans station opened on 1 February 1887. So this event likely celebrating this station opening centenary. A very minor station on opening. However the line to Sunbury that St Albans is on, both then and now, was the second line opened by the Victorian Railways Department on 13th January 1859. Just a few hours after Williamstown and likely the Pier station on the same day.
By 1887 the railways had for many years reached Bendigo (in 1862) and Echuca (in 1864). So the lines through the site of St Albans station had been well and truly established. Many stations between St Albans and Footscray (eg Nicholson Street Footscray mainline trains 1st March 1859) had been well and truly established by 1887. I understand very few of the Bendigo or Echuca trains risked annoying passengers by stopping at St Albans on opening.
Station Centenary would be more accurate for the banner on the day.
From memory the swing door car, which was totally destroyed by fire by an arsonist a few years ago, had just been restored so I suppose they just looked for some excuse to run a tour and St Albans happened to be about 100 years old. I moved to Melbourne November 1987 so even then the centenary was well over. But as you can see, it was a great trip. Hopefully electric tours can resume one day.
@@tressteleg1 I did an amazing tour on the swing door train around the time it was just restored. We travelled on so many lines in a day. Express through the city loop. A highlight was express running from Ringwood heading to Richmond. We were so far ahead of time by Burnley we were held there for minutes on end.
Some recent huge progress with a Tait running under power again, for the first time in nearly 18 years, in January 2020. : ua-cam.com/video/VpWtVjlc4Kw/v-deo.html
However the Covid18 will be impacting on future plans as it does on everything. Understood there was also a major breakthrough wrt Metro rail operators ceasing the blanket ban on preserved electrics running under power. Although steam hauled Taits did run in recent years.
Mark Bowman had more on his channel and some detailed instructive description.
Steamrail also had some coverage : ua-cam.com/video/uTbiVHsx_J8/v-deo.html
Thanks again for your work.
Thanks for those two little video clips. I had heard about the steam hauled Tait trips which would not excite me at all so this is a big step forward. Especially so when you consider Yarra trams will not let anything older than a Z3 tram run in any circumstances. One point about that Tait train which I did notice is all the trailers. Sydney trains requires F1 to have more power cars than trailers to guard against a breakdown which would be somewhat frowned upon if it delayed timetabled services.
The swing doors were last used on the St Kilda line I think . I loved travelling on them . You know they were noisy but quite comfortable and carried a lot of people, more than the Harris trains. I used to catch a non stop Caulfield to City train. It was scary some days because they really moved it along, took about 12 minute from memory. The carriage always had the same people in the same seats. I used to sneak looks at 1 young lady, she was always there.i
They certainly had soft seats, at least in some cars. As far as I know they worked through to Sandringham until the end.
Nice one. Loved the sounds. Look forward to riding them one day when they get recertified in preservation.
With all those doors the tait cars were so much quicker to load and unload than the modern trains. Less time lost at stations. But what I remember most is sitting with the door open through the open land on the way to Ferntree Gully. The smells of the Boronia and Heath wafting through. And of course the suburban sprawl hadn't reached that far either.
It is a shame that "progress" causes us to lose so much.
👍
I liked the smell of the brake blocks on the wheels after a firm application. That got me going LOL.
24D and 12AT were totally destroyed in the fire last year, and were scrapped on site, 107 and 137 M were destroyed also, with only the cab of 107M remaining, frames of 107 and 137 are Unsalvageable.
Thank you for sharing this video.
The swingdoors were called dogboxes or doggies for short. There were no corridors and the seats were in a toastrack formation. But you can see over the seats the car was open above the seats. They had to be made narrow so that if doors were opened by people in passing doggies, still wouldn’t touch. Same problem with QR carriages with swing doors, the tracks were placed a fair way apart.
There were still some running around when I first visited Melbourne from the mid 1960s but I did not go our of my way to find them. I had never heard that carriages were narrow so that doors opened in motion would not hit things.
@@tressteleg1 I read the VR said the swingdoors had to be made narrow that they did not take advantage of the broad gauge
That seems likely, but not necessarily sensible.
1987..........I really miss the voice over lady at Flinders st.
"Flinders street, platform 4.............Glen Waverley train, stopping all stations to Glen Waverley..................stand clear please..................stand clear!
I always thought of her as That Bossy Woman! But it was more a matter of ……. stand clear please……..STAND CLEAR!!!!!!!!!
from what I've heard newport has several double-ended swing door parcels motors and workshop shunters, I wonder if they could convert one into a single ended motor car to replace the ones lost in the fire?
I can help you there as I went to Newport last February and they have I think 470M, a double ended Tait motor which is well advanced in restoration. They were hoping to have it back in service 2024. Both ends will be driveable. Maybe it will also do solo tours, but who knows?
They were fast & comfortable.
Do you know the function of the small round "window" above and to the left of the headlight? this has intrigued me since I was a just a kid 70 years ago.
My guess was correct and this is what I found on the Web.
“The Swing Door and Tait trains also had an oil (kerosene) tail light mounted
behind a recess at the front of the carriage to show a red light to the rear
of the train if a power failure resulted in loss of electric lighting.”
@@tressteleg1 thank you I could not find it anywhere. Makes a lot of sense. regards Keith
It was probably the original post which I read in Trams down under which alerted me to the fact that it was a kerosene tail light. So when I made that entry, I got the result you have seen. Luckily the memory works sometimes 😊
@@tressteleg1 the tail light could be from when they were steam hauled
@@calcutt4 Very possibly. I have a feeling that there is space for a kerosene lantern to go behind that hemispherical lens.
3:10 stand clear please, STAND CLEAR
Terribly bossy woman. Her voice is even on some Gold Coast buses, TELLING us the door is about to close. But as for Melbourne, nothing was worse than the big wooden gate with steel prongs on the top which was slammed shut just as a train came into the station. Too bad if you were just a few steps away. And it stayed shut until the train departed and the station boy could then collect all the tickets. Barbaric!!
tressteleg1 I remember her voice like it was yesterday " not stopping at south Kensington" then I think she became computerised
These trains are good
These and the Sydney 2-motor ‘vintage’ single deck trains both had enormous ‘character’, a feature totally lacking in today’s most modern trains.
Very interesting. What kind of idiot could destroy this? Darn.
Unfortunately there are people in our society that have one or more loose screws in their heads. They used to live in mental hospitals but those were considered draconian. Now they freely roam anywhere.
What a shame.
Do you have shotguns there? 😃
Apart from farmers and members of a small number of gun clubs, few people in Australia own guns and these are strictly controlled. Of course some criminals have them and they are taken away when caught. You never see a gun in public except on police. We manage quite well without them.
Well then if the culprit is caught, a good baseball bat would do just fine. ;-) Really, those old trains are quite pretty.
wow, they still had wooden gates in '94 O_O
the last manually operated wooden gates were on the Sandringham line and were removed in 2010, afaik there is an automatic wooden gate in Ballarat
Ballarat is proably the last but a couple of years ago a VLocity or similar failed to stop in time and crashed through those gates. Not sure what happened after that.
@@tressteleg1 Oh right I forgot about that. Hopefully they fix them
I just checked satellite maps, street view. Apple Maps shows the wooden gates. However Google Earth shows today’s situation. The crossing is now protected by half-road boom gates.
@@tressteleg1 according to the wikipedia article for ballarat railway station the gates are in storage in wendouree and describes the boom barriers as temporary, which implies that they are going to be fixed at some point
These are Still good
Ancient, but fascinating and full of character.
Always wanted to ride one, but was born a few years too late...
I think we all have regrets like that.
you're in luck, they're running in preservation now
And how many Liberal Govt (starting with Bolte in the 50's) did not have the foresight to get rid of these death traps and upgrade to a more modern train, imagine the death toll if an express from Caulfield to South Yarra jumped the tracks around Hawkesburn, the speed they travelled at would turn them into splinters
Luckily we didn't have a Granville happen here, although I have heard plenty of stories of people falling out of carriages or leaning out of windows and being decapitated by lineside objects
dose any one remember me?