mammoth wrote:

Werk, The Tassie transport project would be very interesting. A parallel tome about New Zealand's quaint and restrictive road transport history is 'Road's the Mode" by Jenny Haworth. Heavy going in parts of it's 320 pages though. Good luck with it.

Our tspt scene was definitely a lot different to anywhere else.
Had to have a licence to operate, restricted to a small area ...payed the world to haul out of that area ... And to top it off ...were often competing with Gov owned railway or, at certain points in time, Gov owned road transport.

It's a very complex story ...but I'm having an absolute ball researching it at the moment .... To the point where I've almost stopped researching anything else

Well ....that's a bit freaky


I posted the above comment ... But it's come up as daveus6 ...

See bugger is flogging your work before you've even done it now


Paul

werkhorse wrote:

Well ....that's a bit freaky


I posted the above comment ... But it's come up as daveus6 ...

Have you been vaxed?
(TiC)

werkhorse wrote:

Well ....that's a bit freaky


I posted the above comment ... But it's come up as daveus6 ...

And You've Moved to Lithgow Too..... I'll let Terry explain that quirk for you Werk..lol

MrsMack ..... I hear conspiracy ...their all out to get me

V8 ... Just waiting for my booster ...end of the month ... Maybe I'm lacking in something

Seed ... I've had trouble moving from the couch to the fridge over the break was struck down with a very bad case of CBF ...

CBF Ha ha! ( I've had a lot of it lately)

I'm gunna pinch that!

Jarrod.

Getting back to the original subject .... To operate a public vehicle (for hire or reward) in Tasmania you needed 3 separate plates as pictured ...the photo shows a pre 1953 set up ...1953 being the year we went from annually replaced number plates to permanent plates from general issue.



The big plate is the "general issue" plate issued to all vehicles ...this one being an August 1952 expiry

The 4 digit plate with Cart on the top was the licence to operate as a public vehicle ...in this case a cart licence allowed a vehicle to operate in one of the 8 areas set out by the Tasmanian Transport Commission who overseen the whole operation as well as ran the railways.
The little plate on the top right ... In this case showing the number 1 ... Was the base area the vehicle was allowed to operate.... And to operate outside this area cost a pretty penny ...of which said pennies were given straight to the railways to help them get close to not operating at a loss.
These areas were originally designed so that trucks (and busses) could really only legally operate as feeders to the local rail station ...

Then there were certain goods that were not allowed to be hauled by trucks at all (unless directly to the nearest railway station) ...not even within ones base area ... Wool being the most sacred of all.

As you can see ... It was surprising that we had a road transport industry at all under these regulations ... Which came into force from about 1925 and were finally ... After being slowly diluted through the 1980s and 90s ... Removed around the year 2000.

I'll keep dropping some sort NFI in here as I go ...and it'll be some basic stuff ... Just to keep you guys in the loop

Cheers

Werk

Oh ...I forgot to add to the Cart bit that there were several types of licence to operate.

Cart = within the base area
Carrier = for a certain route (allowed through multiple areas if needed) with designated pick up and drop off points
Ancy = Ancillary - for operators who haul their own goods ..think bakers, builders etc.
Coach = passenger version of Carrier
Omnibus = passenger version of Cart

Werk, Thank you for this interesting information..
Sounds like your railroad commission was in tight with the government, even worse than they were up here in the States.