Haddon Tramway Workshops formed; the Sago Hill Road site is purchased and workshop construction begins.
Fifty Years at Haddon
Most tram museums begin with trams and go looking for land. Haddon began with a harder ambition: build a real tramway first, from the grass up, and preserve the trams by running them.
Stylised silhouette - our own artwork, not to scale; livery indicative only.
The venture began in late 1974 as the Haddon Tramway Workshops, a registered business formed by a group of enthusiasts to preserve historic tramcars. Land was purchased on Sago Hill Road at Haddon, south-west of Ballarat, and work started on the building now known as the Workshop — built to house Ballarat No. 30, the first tram on the site. A decade later, on 24 March 1984, the members met to form the Melbourne Tramcar Preservation Association, incorporated that May.
Timeline
1974
1976
With the MMTB disposing of trams in large numbers, W4 670 and W3 663 are selected after careful inspection and arrive in April and May. W3 656 follows as a parts source — its body is famously incorporated into the on-site residence.
1977
W2s 357, 499 and 505 arrive (the latter two dismantled for parts), along with the body of Victorian Railways tram No. 41, retrieved from a Brighton backyard.
1979
The carbarn is completed to house the fleet. The founding group separates; Ballarat 30 leaves Haddon as part of the arrangements.
1981–82
W2s 222 and 407 arrive together with L 103 and L 105. 222 and 105 are dismantled — 105’s railway-pattern equipment set aside for the VR 41 project.
1984
The Melbourne Tramcar Preservation Association holds its inaugural meeting on 24 March and is incorporated on 26 May.
1980s
The demonstration tramway takes shape: track, overhead, a DC substation, an electrical and pneumatic test cell, a machine shop and member facilities are all constructed by volunteer labour.
1989–90
The DC supply is first tested in May 1989. On 29 July 1990, W2 357 becomes the first tram to run at Haddon under its own power.
1992–94
W4 670 becomes the Association’s first completed restoration (April 1992), followed by W2 407 (December 1994).
2000
The tramway is officially opened on 22 November during the COTMA 25th anniversary conference, hosted in Ballarat.
2001–05
VR 41 is restored in a joint project with Bendigo Tramways, moving under its own power in September 2004 for the first time in 46 years and returning to Haddon in April 2005.
2002–07
L 103 is progressively returned to operation (mobile from November 2002) and its restoration completed in 2007, earning a COTMA Achievement Award.
2007–08
SW5 843 and then SW5 849 arrive; 849 proves the better car and 843 becomes its parts donor. Several accident-damaged bodies (SW5 809, SW6s 890, 901 and 947, W7 1008) arrive for dismantling.
2009–11
W3 663 goes to Bendigo for a complete roof rebuild; at Haddon, the tramway’s curves are comprehensively reconstructed with new sleepers, welded joints and full-length checkrails.
2013
W5 792, preserved in Sydney since 1990 but never restored there, is purchased for a nominal sum and arrives at Haddon in June.
2020s
Restoration of W5 792 to its original 1937 condition becomes the primary workshop focus, with the structural rebuild reported largely complete by 2025.
Fifty years on, the collection stands at eight trams — each chosen to tell part of the story of how Melbourne’s standard tram evolved — on a volunteer-built tramway that remains one of the quiet achievements of Australian transport preservation.