Statistics for Heritage and Tourist Railways in Victoria

ATR Statistical Information - 2009 calendar Year

Victoria has a large variety of Heritage Railways and Tramways. For example, alone of all the Australian States, we have four operational electrically powered tourist tramways as well as the static tramway Museum at Hawthorn Tramway Depot in Melbourne. In addition  to the tramways we have operational Heritage Railways of many gauges located right throughout the State.  Lest anyone thinks that we are a very small player in the tourism  and entertainment business, when we aggregate all our figures, you find that we are now a significant force in the State of Victoria.

We operate our trams and trains over a total length of track of 159. km. Unlike the commercial operators, we are fully responsible for the complete maintenance of this track. We operate over a variety of track gauges commencing with184mm, 610mm,762mm, 1067mm,1435mm, and 1600mm.

We run a large variety of trams and trains and some 562,000 patrons paid to enter our premises. This generated a turnover of $12M. To do this we employed 52 full time staff, 44 part time staff and were assisted by 1,549 volunteers.

We have 29 steam engines and 43 diesels on the operational  register.  (Note not all of these are operational at the one time). We had 9 electric train carriages, 213 passenger carriages, and 21 vans. We also had 95 freight vehicles and  41 trolleys. There were 10 railmotors and 1 bus. In addition to these numbers  there are  many other vehicles in the museum fleets.

Our tramway members have some 129 tramcars in their  collections. Many of these are operational (63) and  range from the original early horse trams.  The collections held by our members also includes  cable, and electric trams operating in their native towns. There are even some of Melbourne's modern trams in the collections. The statistics does not include the Historic government trams located at the Government's Hawthorn Tramway Museum.

Victorian Figures in a Nut Shell