The Tram Museum at Hawthorn in Melbourne

The Saturday that we were in Melbourne just happened to be one of the days that this museum is open, so off we went...by tram to our destination. 

The museum is located in an old tram depot, which as the city grew and its fleet of trams also grew, became inadequate. 

DH and I wandered around reading the information boards and looking at the exhibits while we waited for the next tour. 

I loved this use of a fibre glass rhino to get the message across to drivers sharing the road with trans! 

A room was dedicated to items that are integral in the background of the tram network.

Some of the beautifully restored trams...



When we did the tour we discovered that the oldest tram was just near the entrance to the museum. It was actually a cable car. These systems were very expensive but the state of Victoria and its capital, Melbourne were quite wealthy due to the gold discoveries. The Melbourne cable cars differed from the iconic ones in San Francisco in that they had a ‘trailer’ in which the passengers also rode rather than the ‘all in one’ style of the SF ones. 

The passenger ‘trailer’ of the cable car tram

This photo shows the ‘trailer’ attached to the front part of the tram


It’s hard to see but the brake lever is in front of the boy

Side view




But my absolute favourite was a relatively recent tram...
It was a tram decorated by 5 Pakistani men and used in the Commonwealth Games in 2006. I found the tram and walked through it before I found the information boards. I thought I’d wandered into a Bollywood film set...I was entranced by the colours and the designs were just so vibrant. Very uplifting!! I couldn’t help grinning from ear to ear as I walked through...

Here’s some of the information on this tram...sorry the photos aren’t very good...

Many of the 20 trams on display at the museum could be walked through and best of all, we could pretend to drive them too! And on the older trams we could use the foot pedal in the driver’s area to ring the tram’s bell...clang clang!! 

Watch out! Look who’s driving the Explosives Factory tram!! 


A lovely trip down memory lane. Of course I have only scratched the surface of the tram networks’ history and believe me it was certainly a chequered history.