9 February 2025

The Melbourne Cable Trams were rather extraordinary things – people sat virtually on the road on the front ‘dummy’ car, pulled along by a hidden cable under the road – it must’ve been such fun to sit up front (in nice weather anyway). Apparently they were very quiet, just a slight hiss of the cable. They didn’t have a lot of official stops, you could just hail them anywhere, and sometimes they didn’t even stop completely, you could just jump on (like the people movers as Disneyland!). The first line opened in 1885, and the last line closed in 1940.

There’s only five complete sets left, one at @museumsvictoria, one at the @hawthorndepot (colour photos 2,3), three at the private tram lovers museum at Bylands (last colour pic). Even though there’s diagrams and models, Im not entirely sure how they worked – there was a ‘grip man’ up front who worked a huge lever (2nd last photo), grabbing the cable, or letting go when they went round a corner, because the cable then ran round one of more horizontal wheels, so they had to speed up to get round, with cries of ‘mind the curve’. No doubt that didn’t always work, and how did they get uphill at the same time, eg going from Smith Street into Gertrude ?!

Last image – the red lines are the routes; the ones to Port Melbourne, West Melbourne, North Carlton and Johnston Street Collingwood were replaced by buses rather than electric trams. It was one of the largest system in the world, after Chicago and New York, but a bit bigger than San Francisco, where they were invented to cope with the steep hills. Most photos via Facebook, in turn mostly @library_vic.

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