The Tramway Museum at St Kilda, South Australia houses a significant collection of Adelaide's electric public transport history.
Primarily representing electric trams, the museum may be one of few in the world that can boast of holding at least one representative example of every principle tram type to have been in service on a city street system for the life of the system.
Come take a ride on our heritage trams from Adelaide and interstate as well as learn about the history behind Adelaide’s tram network.
Visit our website: www.trammuseumadelaide.com/
Or view our Facebook page for the latest updates: facebook.com/trammuseumstkilda
Horse tram cab Steam engine 1882 Port adelaide Port adelaide Port adelaide Hyde park If my data lost it means nothing ? If your data is lost the entire school faculty gets laptops for free If we protest it means nothing If you protest the entire country is roaring Data Data Data structures Environment Masters degree means nothing Graduating is nothing Transportation is potential sharks
It is just another of many cities once fooled by American car-centered city design, which is one of the biggest mistakes humans invented. Similarly, Nuclear weapons. Check www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes
Adelaide really is a good size for trams. its main urban core is relatively constrained thanks to the hills east of the city, The rails are in the right place (heavy rail), roughly speaking, and those should be able to handle the main north-south transport task with buses in the outer subrbs connecting to them, and trams closer to the CBd. There are, I think, some easy wins. - Airport tram. Seriously, it’s the perfect transit mode for an airport, level boarding, doesn’t need elaborate stations, and with the CBD so close to the airport it should be able to make the link in a reasonable time even if you add a few stops on the ay there. Add a couple of lines to t the east of city, investigate possible conversion of the Obahn, and I think that’s a solid base network. The airport tram idea though, it’s s obvious for adeliade. It should be next.
When I lived in Adelaide I was told that in the days of horse-drawn trams, they used to put on more horses if the gully winds were strong. Is this correct?
I am from Melbourne and I stayed overnight in Adelaide to ride the old Ghan to Alice Springs. That night in Adelaide I rode the Glenelg tram, the wooden car went like the clappers, a bonus of having it’s own reservation. I think it ran faster than the Melbourne trams and I think faster than the current modern tram. Maybe the feeling of speed is more prounced in an old wooden tram.
what's so dumb is the government ripped up the lines and now is talking about putting trams back to port adelaide and prospect. Imagine if the lines stayed open, we'd be as big as Melbourne
Sorry, but whoever was Mayor in Adelaine in the 1950s should live in hell forever for killing an environmental friendly and good network. He must have been the biggest idiot of all times inside Adelaine.
Not sure about Mayor, but the Premier at that time was the Liberal party’s Thomas Playford. Somehow despite thoroughly skullfucking our state, he managed to stay premier for almost 27 years - 1938-1965. We still haven’t recovered…
Born in Adelaide in 1948, and living there until 1970, I travelled many of the tram routes mentioned in the excellent video . I had no idea that there were so many. I lived and was brought up in Pennington with the terminus opposite the Cheltenham Racecourse ( now, also just a memory). and to go to the city we travelled along Torrens Road, I think to South Road and then through North Adelaide, which to a boy from Pennington seemed seemed quite glamorous. I moved to Melbourne a few years ago, and have always wondered why other cities, including Sydney Perth and I think Brisbane got rid of their trams. I may be wrong but I have always had the view that the transport bureaucracy in South Australia during the fifties and sixties strongly favoured buses, and probably were not alone with similar views held in other states. I guess that is progress. Riding the mostly modern trams all over Melbourne makes me very glad the demise of trams across the country did not happen here.
Very interesting, indeed fascinating. I did not know Adelaide had such an extensive HORSE tram network. Long live trams! The destruction of the Adelaide system was tragic. Bring on AdeLINK! Born and raised in Adelaide, I now live in Melbourne. The tram system is great - accessible, flexible, versatile. Melbourne made an inspired decision to keep its tram lines while the other Australian cities were digging them up.
To be fair, we shouldnt just be making the same mistakes of old tram systems, there were good reasons to at least redesign how they work in our street landscapes. Sydneys new George Street and the upcoming opening of the Parramatta Light Rail is a good example of how to do it right and these entire corridor are now the focal points of those cities. Trams work best when they have their own dedicated corridor free from traffic and with lots of foot traffic. They also are even more effective with multiple lines connecting but not sharing track, and running to interchanges with train station rather than trying to take passengers from the trains - it needs to form a true network. Trams have a great weakness which is interacting eith other traffic, as you would have experienced on some lines in Melbourne and was a driving factor behind many of the closures of lines in Sydney. For the AdeLINK project to be successful it would need to fearlessly give priority to the light rail vehicles. I would also suggest that the single biggest difference which would bring Adelaides transport into the 21st century and revolutionise the way people move in the city is a tunnel connecting the Seaford and Flinders lines with the Gawler and Outer Harbour lines straight through the city. You could cut journey times, massively increase the number of trains per hour and provide comfortable modern air conditioned stations in the city like what Brisbane and Auckland are doing.
Hey Alexa, which political party held government in South Australia between 1952 and 1962? Wait, nevermind. I don't need to be told...it's obvious. Evil doesn't change. It's been the same party robbing the public and destroying the environment for almost a century now.
Fantastic research, animation, and narration! Never knew of our city’s rich and expansive transportation history; has me thinking of everything else this city has lost to time. 21:30 was heart-wrenching! So much closure in one day.
It may seem a nit pick but this would make more sense if the road map was contemporary to the dating as it would show population growth that supported the tram network. Even in the 1930's vast areas of the metro area were open paddocks.
id love to see this too but i imagine it would be much more difficult to find detailed information on this compared to tramway route opening and closing dates and line maps.
While that would be fantastic to see, it was considered but deemed not feasible for this project. As @TJtheWonderChild correctly pointed out, the research required to accurately create the required maps would be intense in terms of time, research, and additional animation work. By using a contemporary map of metropolitan Adelaide, viewers of today are better able to relate and physically position themselves in relation tramlines of the past.
What a complete waste that all of this brilliant public infrastructure got torn out in favour of cars!! Adelaide wouldn't have such lacking public transport if we'd just kept the services we already had!
