Joining the boys driving the tram

TRAM DRIVER: Penny Robinson at the controls of Mable on Sunday. PICTURE / PAUL BROOKS

By PENNY ROBINSON

"I am learning to drive a tram." Every time say that out loud I feel startled. It took me a while to work out why.
Then, during one training session on Mable, the Whanganui tram built in 1912, from the tram cab I spied two smartly dressed women carrying baskets of pretty things, art supplies or flowers.
"They," I said to myself, "are proper women, doing proper women things."
"Why would I think that?" I wondered. The penny dropped when I realised it was regarded as an unusual occupation for a woman.
"We've only got one other woman who is a 'motor man' aka 'driver' and one lady conductor." The other 10 or so are all chaps.
Moreover, I have never driven a motorbike which at least one of the chaps has. Apparently, it's much easier to learn how to drive a tram if you have hit the road on two wheels at speed, because this tram and others are operated with manual controls. You accelerate with a hefty metal hand controller, moving it up notch by notch from series to parallel and feel as if you are thundering along, even though Whanganui's track is only 180m long. There are hopes to extend it in time.

You put the beast in gear with a brass handle, forward and reverse only. You brake manually and ring the bell using your left foot while carefully avoiding the sandbox pedal, mere centimetres away. Hitting that drops sand on to the rails to slow the tram down if there's oil or water on the tracks.

Nor have I driven a bus. Again, at least one of the chaps has. His wealth of experiencemeant he mastered the art of tram driving, switching through the notches, gauging the speed up and down the track, managing the controls deftly all the while watching out for cars, pedestrians and animals foolish enough to move close to the track while 30 rhinos thundered along. It's mostly the ducks. Casually, they stir themselves to waddle off at the sound of the bell and waddle back to preen themselves in the afternoon sun.

What added to my feelings was socialisation. When I was growing up the idea was that girls and women did the "clean" work — home, garden, children. Men did the dirty work. My brothers drove tractors, peered into the innards of trucks, cars and boats, learned to use the tools in our dad's shed. We all, my sister and I too, helped yard sheep, worked in the shearing shed or with docking. When he had had enough of us he would growl, "Go home and help your mother." Probably fully aware that she had had enough of us and sent us out "to help your father".

I became a teen of the 1960s. Feminist voices grew louder. I taught my daughter girls could do anything and reassured my 8-year-old son when he asked, rather plaintively, "Mum, can boys do anything too?"
He nodded and smiled and dived back into his book, learned to programme computers and his sister found hammer and nails and worked with her dad to build a mailbox. But even though I knew girls could do anything, I left the home handywork to the husband along with power tools, wallpaper, paintbrushes, circular saw, power drill, cleaned up and added sawdust and woodshavings to compost for my garden.

The Wanganui Chronicle announcement: "Volunteer tram drivers wanted" caught my imagination. Driving a tram was way out of my skill set but I had liked the idea of driving the big machines from riding trams during a visit to Melbourne.

In a classroom session four of us learnt about health and safety, tram driving theory, then a walk around the tram barn to learn about opening and closing processes. Things like reading the electricity meter, turning on the generator, throwing switches off in an emergency, using radio-telephones, checking tracks, overhead wire and tram for problems.

Walking about clipboard and pen, peering upwards and bending downwards and kicking the cow catcher and standing hard on the pedal to return it to position, I sense how important the Fat Controller in the children's Thomas the Tank Engine story books must have felt along with a huge feeling of responsibility.

After my first driving experience, I was hooked. And terrified. Before every session, my imagination ran riot. I envisaged crashing into the shed door, into one of the cars hovering at the entrance to the roadway, or rocketing off at the far end.

I would arrive for training with knotted stomach, breath out slowly greet my fellows trainee, bus driver Bruce, motorbike rider Tim, and trainers, Jim, a retired engineer, Pat the mechanic and Ian, retired tram and bus driver. All super blokes, welcoming, reassuring and willing to explain the peculiarities of tram driving and its electrical systems. Over and over again until I understood, improved my driving skills and stopped holding my breath as I watched for pedestrians, dogs, vehicles and waddling ducks. And learning to throw the brake on the three-bells signal for an emergency stop.

After four or five sessions at Whanganui getting the feel of the beast, which began to feel more like 10 rhinoceroses than the Melbourne 30 tonners, we took to the Kapiti Tramway and its 1.5km track for an afternoon. Driving little Fiducia under the guidance of Henry and Russell provided a new challenge as she has a different braking system to Mable's. Lurching a bit we took turns to drive the small tram around the corners, up and over the hill to where the view opened out on to sand dunes and the seascape and Kapiti Island, long and low and dark on that damp gray day.

Finally, with this applied knowledge I understood how the electrical circuit worked. Things running in series and parallel. Cogs and motors and air brakes and chain brakes. Things that I was seeing and using getting the feel of the as the driver threw the controller back to zero, cranked it up the notches, slowed for the corners, powered up the hills and coasted down the slopes.

Back in Whanganui we learned to avoid jamming our fingers in the big sliding double garage doors, how to swing the electrical pole from one end to the other. Easing the pole into place on the wire without arcing, the difference between calm days and windy days, switching the track by hand while avoiding a tumble. There are other challenges to one's strength, like pushing the handbrake into place, making me wonder if I was strong enough. I was. The handbrake gripped and the tram held steady.

Came the time for medicals and testing, theory and practice, we were all a little nervous. My fellow trainees and I take turns being conductor and driver and taking the oral theory test. The examiner is calm, offers constructive comment as I talk myself along the track and back. Theory done, the three of us take to the track as trainees for one last time. The examiners deliberate over lunch and by late afternoon, we learn we've all passed. No longer trainees, now novices.

With time, we develop our skills, tell Whanganui stories, talk about the taniwha in the awa and the Riverside market, enjoy the company of folk from Whanganui and out of town.
On my first public outing a group from Otorohanga and Te Kuiti for the Kaumatua Games sang as we rocked along. A later group from Whakatane squashed into the closed section or snuggled into spare tram driver jackets and overcoats as they braved the wind whipping through the open sections. On Sundays kids inspect the brass knobs and handle used for driving. They beg to ring the bell and sometimes, we let them. Strictly while stopped, of course.