Driving in an Autumn day's rain.

Oright, so today a mate & myself went to fix the blown fuse on Z.74, which we blew by trying to draw too much power on the party tram. Of course, with the tram being at the gasworks yard, we had to try and be as autonomous as possible for the repair job.

We dug out the 12V circuit (which appears to be a Bendigo-addition to the tram) almost all the way to the 24V-12V converter before we found the fuse. The 1st fuse was fine. The main 12V fuse was fine too. But no volts were getting through...
After a bit of testing, we discovered the problem: it wasn't the fuse. It was the freaking fuse holder!
Basically, we melted it a bit, and covered the fuse contact, insulating it.

We did a quick Jaycar trip, but they were closed, as was expected, so no replacement fuse holder. So we ended up taking the Z to the main depot for a bit of re-wiring, and for a replacement circuit breaker instead. And we failed the 'spaceship test'; we did not have a soldering iron, or power for said iron, or breaker, etc. We did not pass the full autonomy test, which in the situation of a spacecraft, equals completely screwed, or dead. So fail.

Got track permission, then headed out of the gasworks. I was warned the tram slips in the wet (Autumn day with lots of leaves on the track plus sporadic rain), and even with that warning, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. That Z car slipped all over the place something horrid! The speedometer was more or less useless, and bouncing up and down if I touched the pedals - walking pace is about 5kph, not 20... and on top of this, trying to keep safe, mobile, and non-hazardous to traffic. But I managed somehow.

It was very scary how easily 20tons of aweseome can be out of your control if you misstep.

The sand helped, but the auto-skid detection was not reliable, so I was on the sand button a lot. Very much a lesson on how to take things dead easy.

Got to the depot, ran straight in with the panto up (Gotta love that...), and pulled up next to a hanging 240V socket for the soldering iron. Rigged in a new breaker, soldered up the connectors good, heatshrinked the lot, then it was time to go - half an hour before power-down time. We took off, I went around the depot curves at about 5kph (which felt fast, given the braking conditions), and off we went. The brakes kept making the wheels slide, which was not helpful at the triangle junction (mandatory stop), and very slowly got moving onto the main road. I ended up using rolling resistance for braking where possible, so as to leave the braking alone with a tap at slow, and got it back to the gasworks nice and safe. Definitely the most interesting driving lesson I've had to date!
Interestingly enough, driving up Thunder St. hill was the easy part of the drive... on massive amounts of sand.

Oh, and when we handed in the tram keys afterwards, the service driver mentioned the W class in service was just as bad, skidding out in 1st notch, and picking up speed on braking...

Definitely a learning experience.