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The National Trust is trying to save the W-class trams.

Clay Lucas
August 18, 2009
MELBOURNE'S remaining vintage W-class trams will be phased out on all routes except the City Circle line, despite a new campaign to get hundreds of the dilapidated trams restored and back on the tracks.

The National Trust has begun lobbying to save the trams, introduced in 1923.

Just 12 W-class trams run on the City Circle route. Another 25 run along Chapel Street in South Yarra, Richmond's Church Street and on La Trobe Street in the city.

Nine weeks ago, Yarra Trams stopped running the W-class trams in South Yarra and Richmond on weekends, replacing them with newer models.

And 178 of the vintage trams are slowly deteriorating in the Government's Newport and Preston workshops.

Public Transport Minister Lynne Kosky said that W-class trams were ''an iconic symbol of Melbourne and part of our city's history'', and that the trams would continue to run on the City Circle route. The city's three restaurant trams will also continue to run. But eventually all other W-class trams would be removed as new trams arrived, Ms Kosky said.

''Some passengers, particularly the elderly, find them difficult to board and there are significant problems for disability access,'' she said.

Under the current contract to run Melbourne's privatised tram system, 53 W-class trams were to be in service.

The Government is next week expected to sign a contract to run the tram system for the next eight years with a consortium led by French firm Keolis. A spokesman for the consortium last night declined to comment on the fate of the W-class trams.

The National Trust's chief executive, Martin Purslow, said Melburnians wanted the trams to be more than just a single tourist route around the city.

''You can't say on one hand that these trams are iconic and on the other hand say the Government will only run 12 of them,'' he said.

''It is short-sighted not to be able to see the potential of these trams. What is required is a bit of imagination and a bit of money.''

Other cities around the world, such as Seattle and San Francisco, have bought Melbourne's unwanted W-class trams and upgraded them.

The trust wants the hundreds of W-class trams to be fixed, painted in the traditional cream-and-green livery, and redeployed along a new route from the city to Chapel Street, then to St Kilda and South Melbourne.

W-class trams have been progressively replaced by more modern trams since 1975.

While many want the trams kept on, some passengers do not like them because they do not have air-conditioning and are slow - after a braking issue in 2000, which cost $6 million to fix, they were given a speed limit of 35 km/h.

They are also far noisier than newer models and cannot be used by people in wheelchairs.

The trams were classified by the National Trust in 1990, and deemed of significance to the state.

The trust's listing report says: ''Operating through the central city and developed to facilitate suburban expansion in the post WWI-era, these robust trams are the predominant Melbourne icon, presenting a strong symbol of the city through their apparently ubiquitous presence …''