Another completely un-boring weekend

Last weekend was an interesting one.
The Saturday was fairly usual, standard 72 minute service, blah blah blah. I was fortunate enough to be allowed to drive a couple of trips, which gives me a bit of practice with the tour tape, and we were running trams 808, which is a SW5 class ex-Melb (think it's a SW5), and 18, which is a maximum traction bogie car (built 1914). Driving with the tape can be quite stressful, as you have to keep an eye on the traffic, and pay attention to the running commentary to make sure you're where the tape says you are.

Anyway, we were running another tram as well on a Christmas service, and mid-afternoon, our tram starts running like a complete slug. The lights were also quite dim. At that stage, we were on tram 18, which has a reputation for being a bit of a slug, but when we looked at the lights, and heard the air compressor running really freaking slow, we very quickly worked out that there was an issue with the power. At first, we thought it was the other tram (369, ex-Adelaide H class), as it can be a power hog, then we realised that couldn't be, as it had been running all day with no problems. When we got back to the depot (the tour stops over at the depot), we discovered that the substation had blown a fuse, and that we were running on partial power only (3-phase in, one phase blown for the tech-heads).

So, with this knowledge, we continued the tour as normal, and we took 808, as scheduled. Big mistake. 808 needs the substation to be fully operational; a while back I was told about this, and now I know why. We kept popping the linebreaker (not dissimilar to a circuit breaker), which normally drops when you notch off or if you draw too much current. With the reduced voltage, it was not holding the linebreaker in, and we kept losing power to the motors. I drove the first leg from the depot to North Bendigo, and I was amazed we managed to get the tram up Thunder St hill.

From there, I swapped back to conducting, and our driver got stuck at a couple of hills, to the point where we rolled backwards a couple of times. Now this guy is no rookie; he'd been driving for many years, and knew his stuff. So I really can't say I'd have done any better. We eventually got to the end of the line, about 10 mins late, which no-one seemed to mind, and as that was thankfully the last run, went back to the depot.

It was easier driving with motors cut-out when I was in training than it was to drive with a blown phase.