Early in the 20th century, one of the many children enrolled at the Bendigo North State School was a certain lass called Laura Buchanan.
According to the records, Laura May Buchanan was born at Eaglehawk on May 25, 1907; so, we can safely say that she started school in the following decade.
My interest in Laura stems from the fact that she lived in Arnold Street.
Laura’s father’s occupation was given as “motorman”. He was employed by the Electric Supply Company of Victoria which, apart from supplying direct current electricity to those citizens of Bendigo who could afford being connected, was also the franchisee of the Bendigo Tramways.
The Bendigo trams ran on direct current electricity as they still do today.
What was the task of a motorman?
Perhaps this is most easily answered by stating that Laura’s father was a tram driver.
In February, 1899 the Bendigo Tramway Company, which had been operating steam trams for a number of years, sold their assets to the British Insulated Wire Company which was the parent company of ESCo.
In 1901, work began with the construction of the tram depot, power house and ancillary buildings. These are still in existence and continue to be used, although the power house is no longer used as such.
The first of Bendigo’s electric trams left the depot building off Hargreaves Street near the end of Arnold Street for a trial run at 5pm on Wednesday, April 8, 1903.
A week later a service for passengers was begun to Eaglehawk.
Initially only two trams plied the route, with other cars being added as their assembly was completed.
It was at Richmond Virginia, USA, in 1887 that J Sprague established the basic principles that trams still rely on today in order to operate.
The DC power is transferred from the trolley wire through the trolley pole via the tram motorman’s controller to the electric motors, through the rails back to the power source.
The amount of power to the motors was controlled by George, his right hand on the controller handle.
The electricity was transferred to the traction motors via resistors, which governed the amount of power coming through and so the speed.
There were about eight or nine notches on the controllers, four or so would bring the motors into series, while under full power the motors ran in parallel.
The parallel position was required when negotiating hills particularly when there was a full load of passengers.
ESCo insisted that their motormen do as much coasting with their trams as possible.
ESCo placed electricity meters on the controllers to see which motormen were wasting power; they would have their wages docked accordingly.
There was also the ability to apply a magnetic brake via the controller. The two brake slippers of the magnetic brake can be seen on the rails just to the right of the conductor in the side view photograph.
In the end view of the tram car, on the left above the front apron, a goose-necked brass handle is evident.
This was for the hand brake, a chain wound around a metal worm through levers applied brake shoes on the wheels.
Laura, George’s daughter, would have been proud of the smart uniform that her father wore to work for ESCo.
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