Tramcar restoration progress at STM

[marknewton]

I took this photo in our workshop at the Sydney Tramway Museum yesterday to show our current projects. The truck being overhauled at bottom left is from a Sydney O class car, and is nearly complete. The Melbourne cable trailer No. 589 is looking like a tram again, instead of a flat-pack of firewood. Behind it is Melbourne scrubber car No.11, which started life as Sydney K class car 797 in 1908. It was converted to a scrubber car in 1953, then sold to Melbourne for $550 in 1959. It was in service there until 2002. 

 

The blue car is Sydney R1 class 2001. It was restored using Melbourne trucks for a proposed tourist tramway in the national capital, Canberra. The car was painted in a representation of a special livery carried by R1 1974 for an Air Force recruitment drive in the 1950s. The tourist tramway didn't get built, and the car was donated to the museum along with another tram, a Melbourne W2. We've just received a grant to repaint the car in it's normal Sydney livery of green and cream, and do remedial work to return it to traffic. 
 

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[marknewton]

Sydney 2001's place in the workshop has been taken by ex-Melbourne W2 249. It was the other car restored for the proposed tourist tramway in Canberra. It was painted in a fictitious livery based on that used by early Canberra buses, and lettered for the Federal Capital Transport Commission. The grant I mentioned in the previous post includes funding to remove the marker lights fitted to the W2's aprons in the 1970s, and a repaint in the Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramways Board livery of the 1950s. 
 

 

249s new livery will look similar to that carried by Melbourne Y1 car 611, seen here this afternoon with our young trainee conductors. I'd replaced some brake shoes and wound the slack adjuster in on the car, so we took it for a trial trip to the National Park afterwards.
 

 

A close-up of the M&MTB logo:

 

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

 

Edited December 1, 2019 by marknewton