Haddon Tramway Heritage
Celebrating Melbourne’s preserved electric trams at Haddon, Victoria

Melbourne’s Trams, Preserved in a Paddock Near Ballarat

On a rural block at Haddon, ten minutes south-west of Ballarat, a small band of volunteers has spent five decades keeping a fleet of Melbourne’s classic electric trams alive — complete with their own working tramway to run them on.

Green and cream W2 class tram number 407 running Direct to Begonias shuttles at Ballarat in March 2022
W2 407 running “Direct to Begonias” festival shuttles at Ballarat, March 2022. Photo: Victransport official, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The story begins in late 1974, when a group of enthusiasts formed the Haddon Tramway Workshops and bought land on Sago Hill Road with an ambitious plan: not just to store retired tramcars, but to build a genuine operating electric tramway for them. That group became the Melbourne Tramcar Preservation Association Inc., incorporated in 1984, and their Haddon site grew to include a carbarn, workshop, substation and roughly 650 metres of running track with overhead wire.

This site carries on the story that the Association’s much-loved website told from 1998 to 2022 — the history and technical details of every tramcar preserved at Haddon, the major restoration projects, and the patient craft of building and maintaining real tramway track and overhead by volunteer hands. The old pages live on here at their original addresses, rewritten and refreshed for a new generation of readers.

The Fleet at a Glance

Victorian Railways

VR Tram No. 41

A 1923 bogie dropcentre car from the St Kilda–Brighton Beach railway tramway, rescued from a Brighton backyard and returned to working order.

MMTB L Class

L 103

Built 1921 by James Moore & Sons, one of six L-class cars, restored to its late-1950s appearance.

MMTB W2 Class

W2 357

The last tram built entirely at the Holden Street Tramway Workshops, in service from 1926.

MMTB W2 Class

W2 407

Rebuilt at Preston Workshops after a 1972 collision, preserved in its later-life form.

MMTB W3 Class

W3 663

A 1933 steel-framed dropcentre car, subject of a major roof and body restoration.

MMTB W4 Class

W4 670

One of only five W4s built — the first of Melbourne’s ‘wide body’ trams, and the Association’s first complete restoration.

MMTB W5 Class

W5 792

A remarkably original 1937 three-doorway W5, repatriated from Sydney in 2013 and under restoration to as-built condition.

MMTB SW5 Class

SW5 849

A 1940 sliding-door car donated by VicTrack in 2008 and returned to operating condition at Haddon.

A Century of Electric Trams

Victorian Railways trams 1 and 2 standing on the St Kilda to Brighton Beach street railway, early 1900s
VR trams 1 and 2 on the St Kilda–Brighton Beach line, c.1906–1915. Photo: Walter Hodgkinson, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The story these trams tell reaches back over a hundred years — from the Victorian Railways’ pioneering electric street railway of 1906, whose early cars are pictured above, to the W-series design that defined Melbourne’s streets for most of the twentieth century.

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