Eltham South Electric tramway cab ride videos

[Melbournesparks]

Finally got some video of recent tramway operations processed!

New cab ride video all the way from the depot to West Grasslands, now in high resolution. Keep an eye out for the lizard!

For the return trip ride on a mixed train of North East Victoria railway stock, hauled by 34M.

 

[Paul M]

Brilliant, a truly marvellous trip.
How do you manage to keep the track clear, or do you have a major clear up operation before you start?

 

[Melbournesparks]

Brilliant, a truly marvellous trip.
How do you manage to keep the track clear, or do you have a major clear up operation before you start?

I usually run the mower wagon over it as required to take care of the leaves and weeds. Otherwise it doesn't really need any special attention, unless there's been particularly bad weather.

 

[dunnyrail]

Finally got some video of recent tramway operations processed!

New cab ride video all the way from the depot to West Grasslands, now in high resolution. Keep an eye out for the lizard!

For the return trip ride on a mixed train of North East Victoria railway stock, hauled by 34M.

Nice outward journey, Tunnel 2 looks quite scary for putting any digits in to rescue any itinerant trains with all the potential spiders or even snakes that could be lurking. But blue tongue lizard looks not too scary though do they have a nasty bite? Tunnel 4 even scarier with all the flying things in it! Nice controlled stop at Currawong loop, few know how to drive a train like that and you have given us all an object lesson here. What a super line with a real life jungle setting.

 

[Gizzy]

That is one impressive railway, or should I say tramway!

Do you have a track plan please....

 

[3 minutes of fame]

May I ask where you got the tramway style points and trackwork from? I am building a tramway around the garden on a slightly (!) smaller scale to yours, but would love to have some embedded street running at one end.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Melbournesparks]

Nice outward journey, Tunnel 2 looks quite scary for putting any digits in to rescue any itinerant trains with all the potential spiders or even snakes that could be lurking. But blue tongue lizard looks not too scary though do they have a nasty bite? Tunnel 4 even scarier with all the flying things in it! Nice controlled stop at Currawong loop, few know how to drive a train like that and you have given us all an object lesson here. What a super line with a real life jungle setting.

The pantographs do have a tendency to collect rather a lot of spiderwebs if there hasn't been any traffic for a while! Bluetongues have strong jaws and could probably bite, but they're calm and non aggressive creatures. Much more formidible to a garden snail or wild strawberry, so they're useful to have around. Stopping at that particular loop can actually be a bit of a challenge sometimes, the whole loop is on a 1:20 downhill grade. In hindsight I probably should have eased off the gradient a bit for the loop itself, but hard to change now. In any case the line had to cross under the pathway at tunnel 3 in not very much distance, so there was a bit of a constraint there.

That is one impressive railway, or should I say tramway!

Do you have a track plan please....

I've been meaning to draw a proper, nice, actually to scale track plan for ages, but in the meantime this is the best I've got. There has been a few minor changes since this was made, though it is still broadly correct.

May I ask where you got the tramway style points and trackwork from? I am building a tramway around the garden on a slightly (!) smaller scale to yours, but would love to have some embedded street running at one end.

Thanks in advance!

That sounds like a good project! That style of point is well suited for street trackage. Unfortunately I don't think you can get something like that commercially though, mine were all scratch built especially for the locations.

 

[3 minutes of fame]

Thanks for the reply. More than happy to scratch build. Is there any information either on here or that you can send me about the construction? I'm hand building all the points in any case, so building in the extra rails won't be a big problem.

 

[Melbournesparks]

Thanks for the reply. More than happy to scratch build. Is there any information either on here or that you can send me about the construction? I'm hand building all the points in any case, so building in the extra rails won't be a big problem.

I might have posted about them at the time, though I'm not sure if the images still work. I used aluminium for the point blades, screwed to an aluminium or brass plate that forms the bottom of the flangeway.

 

[JimmyB]

I might have posted about them at the time, though I'm not sure if the images still work. I used aluminium for the point blades, screwed to an aluminium or brass plate that forms the bottom of the flangeway.

View attachment 277779

I assume from the photo there is only one moving blade, and the wheel on the opposite side is guide by the check rail

 

[Melbournesparks]

I assume from the photo there is only one moving blade, and the wheel on the opposite side is guide by the check rail

Yeah, that's how a lot of tramway points are. Only one blade, usually on the inside of the curve though it can go on either side.

 

[3 minutes of fame]

That looks great, thank you. I assume you just filed the switch blade from piece of stock down to the right shape and size? I was thinking about casting these from while metal to avoid needing to make too many!!

 

[Melbournesparks]

That looks great, thank you. I assume you just filed the switch blade from piece of stock down to the right shape and size? I was thinking about casting these from while metal to avoid needing to make too many!!

Yeah it is just a bit of the 3mm flat aluminium bar cut to shape. Casting them would be a great idea, it can take a while to make all the parts by hand. The point blade itself needs to be a moderately stiff and hard wearing material though. There's been a few threads on tramway style points here in the past, like this one.