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Articles
We have published a variety of papers on various aspects of tramways and tramway history:
- The role of trams in our social history
- Tramway ANZACs
- Architecture & design
- Melbourne tramway identities
- Melbourne tramways
- Tramway technology
- Trams & tramway operation
New articles are being added regularly. Subscribers to our news feed are alerted whenever new articles are published.
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Exclusive members-only articles
Some of our papers are available only to Melbourne Tram Museum members. To access these, you will need your userid and password. Don’t have your login details?
- The Macmeikan report on Melbourne cable tramways
- The Melbourne cable tramways 1885-1940, presentation by Robert Green to Engineering Heritage Victoria, 22 May 2008
- Tramway company financial and operational data for HTT, PMTT, MBCTT and M&MTB
The role of trams in our social history
- Holier than thou: the battle for Sunday morning trams
- In the blood: driving trams in the 1980s and 90s
- Joyce Barry: Grassroots advocate for equal opportunity
- Long hot summer: part-time student connies
- Melbourne tramways: union vs management
- A sporting past (alias a fishy story)
- Stepping into the breach: conductresses in the Second World War
- Tailor made: uniform production at Hawthorn Depot
- Victoria’s tramway heritage
- Vimy House: a tramway hospital and its World War I link
- Wattle Park: a tramway tradition
- Women in the tramways
Tramway ANZACs
- Tramway ANZACs: introduction
- John Charles Aitken: decorated stretcher-bearer at Gallipoli
- Henry Thomas Anthony: Boer War veteran
- Robert Avenel Bennet: bravery on the Western Front
- Archibald Blair: tragedy of lost youth
- Colin Graham Forrest: a Scotsman proud to serve with Australians
- Charles Henry Haar: from Gallipoli to the Western Front
- James Henry Harvey: a motorman’s Gallipoli journey
- Percy Markham De Courcy Ireland: rolling stock and military engineer
- Robert Henry Keir: distinguished bandsman and tramway career
- William Nolan: Richmond footballer and cable tram gripman
- Francis Cooper Penny: decorated WWI fighter pilot
- James Richard Pilmer: a long road
- Harold Clifton Rodda: cool under fire
- Hugh Gillies Cameron Spence: comrade of Lawrence of Arabia
Architecture & design
- American Romanesque and the Hawthorn Tram Depot
- Art deco influence on Australian tramcar design
- Decorated Tram No. 497 – Erica McGilchrist (1979)
- From rotary converters to solid-state: tramway substation architecture in Melbourne
- Here comes the rain again: Melbourne tram shelters
- Leonard Flannagan: municipal tramway architect
- Shelter from the storm: a 1930 album of M&MTB passenger shelters
- Tramway architect: Alan G. Monsborough
- Transporting Art – Melbourne’s Art Trams 1978-2018
Melbourne tramway identities
- Alex Cameron: father of Melbourne’s electric trams
- Bent by name, bent by nature
- Clarrie O’Shea – hero or villain?
- Francis Boardman Clapp: transport entrepreneur
- George Smith Duncan: tramway engineer
- Hector Hercules Bell – ringing in the new
- The Hiltons: bush tramway pioneers
- The Sir Robert Risson era: an enduring legacy
- T.P. Strickland: designer of the W class tram
Melbourne tramways
- A brief history of the North Melbourne Electric Tramways & Lighting Company
- Australia’s first electric tram: the Box Hill to Doncaster tramway
- Fares please! An economic history of the Melbourne & Metropolitan Tramways Board
- Footscray: genesis of a local tramway
- Hooves and iron: Melbourne’s horse trams
- Never a paying passenger: the Fitzroy, Northcote & Preston Tramways Trust
- Northcote: the on-again, off-again cable tramway
- The Northern Tramway Company
- Penny fare to Pentridge: the Melbourne, Brunswick & Coburg Tramways Trust
- Risky business: building South Melbourne’s first electric tramway
- Steady as she goes: the Prahran & Malvern Tramways Trust
- Steam, sand and surf: the Sorrento Tramway Company
- Timeline of Melbourne’s tramway network
- The tram through the park: the origins of the West Coburg tramway
- VR electric street railways
Tramway technology
- 1934 – Big issues in Australian tramways
- Building the W class tram
- Cable trams: how they work
- Electric trams: how they work
- Electrolysis: the destructive by-product of electric traction
- Fare enough: A systems view of ticketing and fare evasion on Melbourne’s trams, from bell-punch to myki
- Lost the groove: tramway rail manufacture in Australia
- Power collection for Melbourne tramcars
- Tramway level crossings in Victoria
Trams & tramway operation
- All night long: Melbourne’s recycled one-man cars
- Birney Safety Cars in Melbourne
- Haunting the rails: ghost trams of Melbourne
- Keeping time: Bundy clocks in the M&MTB
- Melbourne trams to the world
- ‘Mind the curve!’
- No stairway to heaven: the failure of double deck buses in Melbourne
- Opening a Melbourne cable tram bell punch
- The Shilling Tour: Melbourne’s first tourist tram
- St Kilda Junction signal box operation
- The remarkable PCC tramcar: why Melbourne missed out
- Travels in the dark: all-night trams in Melbourne
- What tram do I catch? An incomplete history of Melbourne tram route numbers
