B type Adelaide tram

The B type Adelaide tram was a class of 30 straight sill, open cross-bench trams built by Duncan & Fraser, Adelaide in 1909 for the Municipal Tramways Trust (MTT). Although popular in summer, they were less so in winter when exposed to inclement weather. Thus in 1917 with the MTT requiring more trams, 41-60 were converted to Californian combination trams, closely resembling the A type trams. When the MTT introduced an alpha classification system in 1923, they were designated the B type. Numbers 41-43 became the A2 type and 44-60 the A1 type. The A2s were used exclusively on the isolated Port Adelaide network.^[1][2][3]

This article is about a class of tram that first ran on the street tramways of Adelaide, South Australia in 1909. For an overview of the city's tram types, see Tram types in Adelaide.

B type
B42 at the Tramway Museum, St Kilda in January 2007
Manufacturer	Duncan & Fraser
Assembly	Adelaide
Constructed	1909
Number built	30
Fleet numbers	31-60
Capacity	50
Specifications
Car length	9.91 metres
Width	2.57 metres
Height	3.30 metres
Weight	10.6 tonnes
Traction motors	2 x 33hp Westinghouse
Current collector(s)	Trolley pole
Bogies	JG Brill Company 21E
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in)

Preservation

One has been preserved:

• 42 by the Tramway Museum, St Kilda^[3]

References

1. Destination Paradise. Sydney: Australian Electric Traction Association. 1975. pp. 14, 15, 18.
2. "Adelaide's Toastrack Trams" Trolley Wire issue 258 August 1994 pages 3-14
3. B type tram 42 (1909) Archived 4 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine Tramway Museum, St Kilda