A varied Saturday

On Saturdays I conduct on the service tram. It's usually a pretty cruisey job; stand around and look pretty, make sure no-one's sticking arms/legs/heads out of the tram (unfortunately, natural survival has been overridden =P ), sell tickets, et al. The Saturday just gone, however, was quite interesting.
When the 1st tram goes out, another tram precedes it, to sit around at the gold mine as a display tram. Well, as I am now a driver, I was tasked with the display tram, and I was also tasked with a charter service later in the afternoon. I also had a trainee conductor on for the morning as well. So it was going to be a busy day.
The night before, I was doing some training on the restaraunt tram, so I needed an extra kick - so I started with an extra strength coffee (I had no intention of being only half-awake on the road with 17+ tons of awesome), and when I got to the depot, it turned out that the tram that was on service had got swapped for the one on display - which meant that there was a tram in my way at the depot when I was supposed to leave 1st...
Did my usual start-up checks, power, foot pedals, lifetray, low-speed brake test. When I used to spend my afternoons at South Melbourne depot after school, I would always remember the lifetray test. The 2 wooden slats at the front are a catch mechanism that upon impact, will drop an attachment onto the rails, which will scoop up whoever fell in front of the trigger. Hence lifetray. It always made quite a clang.

After we headed out, we switched around at the gold mine, so as to park the display tram where it needed to go, and to leave room for the restaurant tram to arrive later that day. Headed out on the service car, where I proceeded to sit on my arse all morning. With the trainee, I was told to 'sit and observe' so i did. Easiest morning shift to date.

After lunch, did some actual conducting, and had an old mate from my Melbourne days visit me on the tram, and he seemed to really enjoy the trip. He couldn't wipe the smile off his face, seeing me at my dream job. So that was really cool too.
Then I flicked some switches on the restaurant tram, and started up the display tram for the charter. Thankfully there are volume controls in the drivers' cabs, because Christmas carols are not my favourite. Not even close. The bulkheads are also quite thick, so I really couldn't hear the tape at all.
Everyone arrived for what a co-worked dubbed 'the ankle-biter tour', and we headed off, 10mins late. Drove off nice and cruisy, as we would have to wait for the service car to pass us, and if i drove fast, we'd just have a longer wait. Also, everyone had partypies and the like, so making all the kids spill their food would not have been good. Service car passed (5mins late), and we headed up north to meet Santa. The kids hopped out and had a ball, and then we headed back to the gold mine to drop everyone off and clean up the tram.
When I did the restaurant tram the night before, even after unloading everyone and all the food, you still have a lot of wine glasses on board, so you still have to take it nice and gentle. I was doing that with this tram as well, until I realised that there was nothing fragile on board - so i fanged it back to the depot.
Being able to drive fast on a tram is awesome.