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Statistics for Heritage and Tourist Railways in Victoria


ATR Statistical Information - 2010 calendar Year

Victoria has a large variety of Heritage Railways and Tramways. For example, alone of all the Australian States, we have three operational electrically powered tourist tramways, a cable tramway, the  units powered by a internal engine, as well as two static tramway museums at Bylands and  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 602,000 patrons paid to enter our premises. This generated a turnover of $16.5M. To do this we employed 54 full time staff, 41 part time staff and were assisted by 1,866 volunteers.

We have 30 steam engines and 68 diesels on the operational  register.  (Note not all of these are operational at the one time). We had 18 electric train carriages, 251 passenger carriages, and 28 vans. We also had 110 freight vehicles and  44 trolleys. There were 11 railmotors. In addition to these numbers  there are  many other non operational vehicles in the museum fleets.

Our tramway members have some 124 tramcars in their  collections. Many of these are operational (46) and  range from the original early horse trams.  The tramway collections held by our members also includes horse,  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 

  2004 2007 2009 2010
Length of Track 160km 162 159 158
Permanent Staff 46 39 52 54
Part Time Staff 43 33 44 41
Volunteers          1412  1778 1549 1866
 Total Turnover  $8.8m $9.8m $12M $16.5M
Patrons  483,000 572,505 561,723 601,690
Engines - Steam       27  28 29 30
Engines Steam - Not  operational 51 48 58 45
 Electric Carriages and engines   1 9 1 18
 Electric Not Operational   10 19 16 9
Electric Multiple Unit Carriages     9 9
Electric Multiple Units  Carriages  - not  operational     14  
Engines - Diesel 45 52 43 68
Diesel Engines  -  not  operational 16 16 17 18
Carriages           150 194 213 251
Carriages -  not  operational 69 87 91 60
Vans                       20 26 21 28
Vans - not  operational 24 26 30 29
Freight  Vehicles 203 122 95 110
Freight - Not  operational 117 217 224 160
 Rail Motors         14 18 10 11
Rail Motors - Not operational 7 10 11 10
Tramcars               75 70 63 46
Trams - Not  operational 39 51 66 78
Trolleys 38 37 41 44
Trolleys - not  operational 15 22 43 29
Buses 4 4 1 3
Buses - Not  operational 8 10   4
Total Units  under our care. 906 1066 1096 1065

Updated 14 July  2011


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