(no subject)

[freyakitten]

Personal thoughts on the new trams vs the old trams:

• the new trams have no stairs
• the old trams have stop buttons that are (theoretically) reachable from every seat

Thus, I can express no preference. While my knees complain sometimes when mounting the stairs into the old trams, when trying to get off of the new ones, I must get up and go to the doors in order to press the stop button, then sit down again until it actually stops, lest I fall over when it makes sudden (and not so sudden) movements like this mornings' bus.

Actually, yes, I can express a preference. You can wipe the old trams' seats off with a damp cloth before sitting down, as they're vinyl, not fabric. The new ones have fabric seats, and cannot be cleared of whatever debris has accumulated there without removing the seat.

Comments

[maelorin]

Some passengers have taken to sitting on the otherwise discarded sections of their newspapers, so I've noticed while travelling on the new Light Rail carriages.

I just loved how, after weeks of testing and so forth, the new trams had to be pulled out of service to have their airconditioning systems modified to cope with cooling a tramload of passengers on a real Summer's day ...

The romance has gone now.

[freyaw.livejournal.com]

I shudder to think what'll happen when there's tramloads of people who've just left Glenelg, dripping sand everywhere as happens on the tram in Summer... I missed it this year due to playing bridge.

It's as if their (German?) designers didn't have to think about the logistics of the vehicle being used in an Australian Summer... About one in every three trams I catch at the moment is an old tram.

[maelorin]

It's as if their (German?) designers didn't have to think about the logistics of the vehicle being used in an Australian Summer

No. They were designed for Europe. The procurement guys just liked the look of them, I imagine.

Whatever the testing processes that were designed, at no point did anyone think: "Hey, our Summers can achieve 40^oC+ - we ought to test these things for those conditions ..."

I don't think the "interior designers" brief mentioned sand, salt water, or commonsense.

About one in every three trams I catch at the moment is an old tram.

The olds ones are still being phased out/new ones being phased in - asn new ones arrive and are considered ready to roll out.

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

Actually the problems was inadequate cooling of some of the electrics, which overheated rather severely...

[maelorin]

Which is a failure to cope with realistic operating conditions - simply not designed to cope with our real summer temperatures. The fix, as I understand it was not particularly complex - but was somewhat time consuming - once the relevant parts were obtained.

I could, of course, have completely misunderstood what little I know about the whole saga :)