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Founded in 1803 as a prison colony, the Tasmanian capital of Hobart is Australia's second-oldest city after Sydney, New South Wales. Operating as a small colonial shipping outpost throughout most of the nineteenth century, the Tasmanian capital grew rapidly throughout the century to become a bustling vibrant city, its residents more than eager to shed the city's less than desirable past. By the 1880s, Hobart was home to more than 50,000 residents and the need for public transit was more than palpable. News soon reached the island about the horse- and steam-powered trams appearing in Sydney and Melbourne, making the desire for such a system in Hobart all the more pressing. This edition of Once Upon a Tram will explore Hobart's 67-year history of electric rail service upon the Tasmania Tramway, which operated within the capital from 1893 to 1960.
In the early 1880s a group of British businessmen proposed the construction of an electric tram network for Hobart, undertaking a city-building project which would help place Hobart on the map. While the Tasmanian Government initially accepted the proposal and passed the Hobart Tramways Act of 1884, Premier William Giblin and his advisers were wary of the process of electrification, desiring an alternative method like steam to power the network. Despite this early period of uncertainty, the project's boosters registered the Hobart Electric Tramway Company in 1886, though construction of the first line was ultimately delayed until 1892 and the system's inaugural day of public service was September 23, 1893.
In its first decade, the Hobart Electric Tramway Company became the first network in the world to employ a fleet made up entirely of double-decker trams, beginning a pattern within the British Commonwealth which would see the technology put into service in Britain, Hong Kong, and various cities across Australia and New Zealand. Ungainly and prone to tipping, the double-decker trams would remain a perennial threat to passengers, motorists, and pedestrians alike, though the actual rate of reported incidents was very low throughout the system's 67-year run. Featuring open-air upper levels, the double-decker trams were a staple of the Hobart Electric Tram Company's original 20-car fleet from 1893 to 1928.
With the 1906 acquisition of a supplementary fleet of single-deck trams that were primarily employed along the routes that gave the double-decker trams the most trouble (steep inclines, other obstacles, etc), Hobart's Tasmania Tramway continued to grow throughout the first few decades of the twentieth century. The original network consisted of three routes: the Macquarie Street Line (aka the Cascades Line), the Sandy Bay Line, and the Elizabeth Street Line, spread across 12 kilometres of track. Able to carry passengers both within the downtown centre and out of town to the popular summertime destination of Sandy Bay, the network was more than adequate for the city of 50,000.
According to local transit historian Ian G. Cooper, the network reached its maximum scope, with a couple of minor exceptions, in 1937, reaching a total of eight lines and 32 kilometres of track after a sustained decade of expansion which began in the mid-1920s. A combination of urban and suburban lines, Hobart's tram network operated in much the same fashion as others of its size at the time, ferrying passengers around the city centre, to the railway station and harbour, and outward to the various suburbs and popular summertime destinations such as the aforementioned Sandy Bay.
In 1913, Hobart City Council took control of the Hobart Electric Tram Company, transferring it from a private to public entity and rebranding the system as the Hobart Municipal Tramways. While the takeover proved a success and led to the previously described period of mass expansion, the arrival of the Second World War, followed by the rise of the automobile paired with an increasingly dim public view of trams and trolleys worldwide, meant days were numbered for the electrified tram service in the Postwar Era.
In 1946, the tram fleet reached its maximum strength at 76 cars total, a number which almost immediately fell off in the years to follow as older trams were either replaced by electric trolley buses or retired completely due to a steady decline in ridership during the late 1940s and 50s. By 1954, all of Hobart's signature double-decker trams were pulled from service and scrapped, with only one car saved by the Tasmanian Transport Museum at Glenorchy. Today, a small collection of double- and single-deck cars have been recovered from various private collections and scrapyards around Australia, and some have been either partially or fully restored.
On October 21, 1960, the last tram graced the streets of downtown Hobart, bringing an end to 67 years of electric street rail service. Following the trams' departure, the Metropolitan Transport Trust entered into a relatively short, eight-year run of exclusive electric trolley bus service. These would be the last years of service for the city's trolleybus fleet which had joined the network back in 1935. Only eight years after beginning their solo run in 1960, Hobart's last trolleybus was retired on November 22, 1968. The occasion was marked by a large crowd gathered for the send off, as trolleybus 235 joined the collection at the Tasmania Transport Museum. Hobart's public transportation is today but a shadow of its former self, operating a much scaled-down version of the service it once operated, with sparse routes served solely by a relatively small fleet of diesel-powered buses.
In 2003, Hobart City Council put forward a proposal for a heritage tramway utilizing a single restored Hobart Electric Tram Company car during summer months along the waterfront. To make use of the existing trackbed that remains in the area, the heritage service would have been largely put into use as a seasonal tourist attraction, with ridership vastly limited due to the one solitary car in operational condition.
While the heritage tramway proposal failed to gain traction, a 2009 commuter rail proposal, which would be operated as the Hobart Northern Suburbs Railway, was met with a much more positive reception by City Hall and members of City Council. The proposed light rail corridor would make use of a defunct commuter rail service that once operated north outward from the city centre until 1975, when it fell victim to low ridership and escalating costs in the wake of the rise of the automobile. While still in its earliest stages, the light rail proposal, which would run up to four trains at 12-minute intervals in and out of central Hobart, would represent the first such service to appear on city streets within the capital in over 40 years.
Once again for bonus points, the above video features a short 39-second archival newsreel of the final day of service for Hobart's last tram back in 1960. Short but sweet, the footage provides a rare glimpse into the transit past of Tasmania's capital.
SkyriseCities will return soon with a new edition of Once Upon a Tram, which will take an in-depth look at the transit legacy of a city near you.
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