Buying a new tram for Melbourne isn’t like buying a new car – they cost a few million dollars each, and even if you had that much money ready to spend, one can’t exactly head down to your local dealer and pick one up off the shelf. Instead, the purchase of new trams involve long and convoluted tender processes, and lots of due diligence – a process that has occasionally seen trams from other cities operate in Melbourne.
Eurotram
The first example of a foreign tram on trial in Melbourne was the Bombardier manufactured Eurotram in 2003.
Photo by Jcornelius, via Wikimedia Commons
Normally used on the Porto Metro system in Portugal, Porto tram number 018 spent a few months in Melbourne during 2003, where it spent seven days running shuttles to the Australian Open tennis, and three days transferring Grand Prix patrons to and from Albert Park.
Combino Plus
In 2007 Siemens decided to send one of their Combino Plus trams to Melbourne.
Photo by Jcornelius, via Wikimedia Commons
More at home on the Metro Transportes Sul do Tejo network in the Almada and Seixal municipalities of Portugal, tram number C008 spent March to June 2007 running route 16 services, as well as running shuttles to the Grand Prix at Albert Park.
Flexity Classic
Bombardier appears to be a company keen to demonstrate their trams in Melbourne, because in 2007 they let us take a Flexity Classic for a spin.
However for this demonstration, the tram didn’t have far to travel – newly built tram #111 was delivered by ship to Appleton Dock then spent a few days running around the streets of Melbourne minus passengers, before being sent by road to Adelaide, where it entered service on the Glenelg Tram.
Why?
So why would a private company spend millions of dollars loading trams onto ships, and send them to Melbourne so that we can give them a test drive? The simple answer – because they wanted us to buy them!
To understand this, we need to go back to the early-2000s. Melbourne’s tram network had just been chopped in half and franchised to a pair of private operators, who were obligated under their contract with the government to purchase new low floor trams. Yarra Trams opted for Alstom Citadis trams from France, while M>Tram went for the Siemens Combino trams from Germany, leaving major tram manufacturer Bombardier on the outside.
In the years that followed, patronage on the Melbourne tram network grew, but the government didn’t have a real plan to expand the fleet – but the global rolling stock manufacturers were ready for the day when a tender for new trams arrived at their door, so tried to keep their relationship with Melbourne warm.
Eventually that day came in July 2009, when the Victorian Government called for expressions of interest for the manufacture and supply of 50 new trams. In October 2009 manufacturers Alstom and Bombardier were shortlisted to bid for the contract, based on their experience overseas and their local manufacturing capabilities, with Siemens being left on the outer.
Bombardier won the bid in September 2010 with their variant of the Flexity Swift tram, with the first E class tram finally making it onto Melbourne streets in 2013.
A few more photos
Vicsig has photos of the Eurotram in Melbourne, as well as the visiting Combino Plus.
As for the Adelaide Flexity tram running around Melbourne – photos:
- a few glances on La Trobe Street by Peter Bruce,
- cruising the streets and at the terminus by Kym Smith.
While the Bombardier Eurotram also visited Sydney in 2002 – photos by Matthew Geier.
And a reverse example
Before it was delivered to Melbourne, Siemens sent a D2 class Combino tram to the Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung, where it was used during January 2004 on a temporary track to demonstrate the concept of light rail. Unfortunately for Siemens, the demonstration didn’t sway the city of Kaohsiung, who decide to purchase trams from Spanish firm CAF.
The brilliant thing is…
Those trams were able to be shipped to Melbourne and be operated on our network. The gauge was the same. The wheel profile was suitable. The clearance diagram was suitable. The pantographs worked with our overhead. The power supply voltage was suitable. (Or, at least, with very minor tweaks, the trams worked.)
That’s pretty amazing standardisation. And even more amazing because there’s no mandated international standard for this stuff. It’s basically because electric tram technology was deployed worldwide around 1900 using equipment based on similar products developed by GE and Westinghouse in the US. One hundred years later trams are still pretty interoperable.
Oh, and don’t forget that Melbourne has exported quite a few W class trams to cities in Australia, NZ, and the US.
Museums overseas love the W class:
http://www.hawthorntramdepot.org.au/papers/t2world.htm
But after a flood of trams leaving Melbourne in the 1980s, the National Trust was responsible for stopping their export:
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/wclass-trams-prized-overseas-but-a-vanishing-species-here-20101016-16ods.html
I also believe one was sent to Denmark as a wedding gift to now King Fredrick and Queen Mary of Denmark on their wedding day and is now in a museum in Copenhagen (in case you don’t remember, they met at the Sydney Olympics back in 2000 and their wedding was in 2004, which was the last royal wedding I watched).
Correct – SW6.965 is at the Danish Tramway Museum.
https://www.hawthorntramdepot.org.au/papers/t2world.htm
The Combino Plus was a really nice tram and very different to the earlier Siemens rubbish we foolishly bought. I am not sure the E class are so good, grinding to a rough stop. Gold Coast Flexity 2 seemed great to me yet made by the same company.
Apparently the issues with the Combino design was discovered way back in 2004:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combino#2004_recall_due_to_flaws_in_construction
In 2006 it was flagged as issue in Melbourne:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/faults-to-take-trams-off-road-for-months/2006/11/16/1163266712894.html
But the fixes were not carried out until 2009:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/latest-model-trams-found-to-be-cracking-up-20090415-a7h9.html
Yes, it is amazing the level of interoperability given no international standard!
Still, there are some de-facto standards, if only from the manufacturers getting economies of scale; for new builds, the closer to those standards, the lesser the customization cost.
Even legacy networks should, I think, be aiming over time to meet these standards, eg 750v overhead, clearance, less so gauge – very expensive to change compared to some bogies!
And it’s worth the manufacturers adhering to these, more or less; you might miss out on the first order, or the second; but you’ll never get the next order if your trams are incompatible with the other manufacturers’.
Around the world there are a few odd tramway gauges – metre gauge, and 1,524 mm Russian gauge are the main ones – but ‘standard’ gauge is the standard:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tram_track_gauges
The only other difference is the move from 600 volt overhead on legacy systems, compared to 750v on newer light rail networks. But I believe Melbourne has been slowly moving to a higher overhead voltage:
https://www.railpage.com.au/f-p1404824.htm
[…] it or now, but two Portuguese trams have visited Melbourne before – a Bombardier Eurotram from the Porto Metro in 2003, and the Siemens Combino Plus […]
Imagine choosing to demonstrate the concept of light rail with a D class tram.
Siemens didn’t own up to the crack issues with Combino trams until March 2004, so they were still in full sales mode then. 😛
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combino#2004_recall_due_to_flaws_in_construction
True – just even the design/passenger experience is so crappy (sorry bitter former resident on the 8, 55 and now 58)