The sporting event of the year is happening today! Teams from 23 European nations compete to see who has the best tram drivers, alongside special guests from Melbourne. Each team of two drivers takes it in turns to complete eight manoeuvres (”disciplines”) as quickly and accurately as they can. For each manoeuvre, they can earn up to 500 points for their team, and a ninth 500 points depending on how fast they do it. The points drop sharply from 500 to 0 with each inaccuracy or mistake.
I think it’s a great way to get people interested in trams! Why not watch the coverage?
The skills involved are crazy. Two trams are set up on a double track. After pressing a start button on the platform, the driver has to go to the driver’s cab, and…
Stop-and-go: A bowl, full to the brim with water, is balanced on a shelf on the front of the tram. You must start and stop the tram three times while spilling the least amount of water possible.
Go to the other end of the tram and drive in the opposite direction.
Speed trap: Accelerate to precisely 25km/h (the speedometer has been removed). The exact speed will be measured as the tram passes a speed trap.
Target braking: Pass the stop sign, then brake the tram in one single motion so it comes to a halt exactly on the target point.
Tram bowling: Set off again. Strike a 1.5 metre bowling ball to send it towards the pins, knocking over as many as you can. You must stop the tram before it crosses the foul line. This one is extremely silly, and for obvious reasons, a crowd favourite. Yes, there’s a crowd, hundreds of people are there to watch!
Leave the tram. Move to another tram on the opposite track. Start it up.
Mermaid dummy: Your teammate will place a cardboard cutout dummy along the side of the track. From within the driver’s cab you must assess whether it is possible to drive past without hitting it. You must instruct your teammate to move the figure as close as possible to the tracks. Your teammate cannot help you and must follow your directions.
Basketball: Drive the tram forward, passing the mermaid figure, and stop with your driver’s cab window as close as possible to a small basketball hoop by the trackside. Throw five balls into the hoop. If you stop in the proper position, this is trivially easy. If you stop in the wrong position, this may be impossible.
Perfect stop: Drive the tram forward and stop so that the centre of the second door is as close as possible to the centre of the platform. The platform is moved every time, so you can’t watch where other teams stop. You can stop and start as many times as you like, but you may not reverse. When you open the doors, the distance will be measured.
Reverse: From the front cab, reverse the tram. Stop as close as possible to a barrier. Your teammate may assist, but only by blowing or not blowing a whistle. Most teams work out a whistle code beforehand.
Then leave the tram and race to press the stop button on the platform.
If you complete all of these manoeuvres in less than 3 minutes and 30 seconds, you score an extra 500 points. Together with the 500 points for each manoeuvre, there’s a total of 4500 points available. After all the teams have had their first attempt, they swap drivers and the other driver has their attempt, so the final scores are out of 9000. The criteria are extremely strict, those 500 points can disappear in a matter of centimetres. It’s rare to see total scores higher than 6000.
Some countries take this very seriously and even have national qualifiers! That’s why the criteria are so strict.
Oh, and because all the drivers will be driving the same trams (which may not be the same trams they’re used to driving), they get to practice in the depot the previous day to make it fairer.
There are also world championships which are even tougher!