Hi Cam, Adam from the Melbourne Tram Museum here. Would love to get your thoughts on this! This is my first map done from scratch.

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We’ve recently launched our special exhibition named Tramway Anzacs, which tells the story of the 538 tramway employees who volunteered for military service in World War 1. As well as sharing their fascinating stories (including a guy who went from being a Cable Tram Gripman at Port Melbourne depot to fighting alongside Lawrence of Arabia!), we wanted to tell the social history of Melbourne, the impact on the war, and give an insight into the tramway systems at the time.

Melbourne had several different transport networks operating in that era – there was the cable tram system in the inner parts of the city, and the electric trams fanning out into the new suburbs (owned by a mix of city councils and private companies). The Victorian Railways also operated a reasonable (steam-hauled) suburban service. A small number of petrol and horse buses also operated in local areas.

I figured the best way to show what travel in the era was like would be through a historically accurate map designed with modern and familiar conventions, but also reflecting the design trends of the era.

While several books about the cable and electric tram networks have included published track maps, these were in turn generated from the old Osboldstone, Sands & McDougall, and Mullens maps of the era. But these only showed the tracks, not the specific routes that operated – certainly not with individual route lines. The routes were often described on the reverse of these maps, along with fare and timetable information.

Leaning heavily on the current Public Transport Victoria/Yarra Trams map symbology for the Melbourne Tram Network, and using a geographic map of the era as a base I plotted out each specific route, using this particular combination of geographically accurate with modern symbology (given at the time the diagrammatic style was not yet widely used).

However, finding out what the specific routes were and their numbers/identifiers was actually quite difficult; the books I used as reference were often not specific enough! I had particular difficulty with finding the routes of the Prahran and Malvern Tramways Trust in the south-eastern suburbs. In a cruel twist once I had completed the first substantive version of the map, I discovered a copy of the Osboldstone pocket rail and tram map (c. 1916) in our museum archives that listed each of the routes and the streets they travelled in. Luckily all of my long-hand research turned out to be correct…

Colours and Symbology

I selected colours for the Cable Tram route lines from the colours that the trams themselves were painted in; when the system was first built in the 1880s a large chunk of the population was illiterate, so they could not read signage. To remedy this, the Melbourne Tramway and Omnibus Company (MTOC) provided fixed destination information and painted the trams in distinctive colours for each route, also displaying a lamp of that colour at night (these colours were repeated on different city streets). At the time, the cable grip+trailer sets only operated on specific routes, and so did not require changeable destination signs.

Electric trams used a mix of movable destination blinds, route numbers/letters, and coloured lights dependent on the operator. A great example is the lines of the Hawthorn Tramways Trust (HTT) which operated from Princes Bridge along Swan St to Camberwell, Norwood (Burwood), and Wattle Park. For these route lines I used the coloured light combination that would be shown corresponding to the destination; I also used the same for the routes of the PMTT (solid colour route lines were routes that used two lamps of the same colour). Curiously the Melbourne, Brunswick, and Coburg Tramways Trust (MBCTT) used a Sydney-style system of coloured shapes with destination text; I used the colours of these for the route lines along Lygon Street.

I believe this is the first time that all of the actual tram routes that operated in WW1-era Melbourne have been plotted together on the same diagram.

Fascinating Observations

• The PMTT services using Glenferrie Road Malvern as a key corridor, and how far the network had expanded into the eastern and south-eastern Suburbs
• St Kilda being a very popular destination and the utility of the services to Esplanade from the suburbs. Apparently these were very popular on Sundays.
• Through-routing of cable services through the city
• Use of Lonsdale Street in both directions for Cable services
• The number and pattern of routes operated by the Hawthorn Tramways Trust. This was the only electric network to run into the CBD from its inception
• The location of the Cable/Electric tram system interchange points and the routes that served these

What I would do differently in the next version

• Cable routes shown as two parallel lines of the same colour with a small gap between, rather than a solid line – to differentiate them from the electric lines, also to serve as an allegory for the cable slot distinct to these tracks;
• In the central city area, showing the cable route lines intersecting with some going “over” or “under” those they intersect; determined by the arrangement of the physical cables at those intersections. For example, at Collins and Swanston Street the moving cables for the Collins Street trams went over the top of the cables in Swanston Street, because of the incline immediately east of the intersection in Collins Street. The gripmen driving the cable tram services in Swanston Street would have to “throw” the cable out of the jaws of the grip and coast through these intersections, picking up the cable on the other side of the intersection. 
• The legend

Printed copies of this map in A2 size are currently available through our gift shop, and will shortly be available through our new online store. We’re a non-profit organisation run entirely by volunteers – all proceeds come back to furthering our preservation and curation of Melbourne’s fascinating tramway history.

Cheers! Adam (@1500vDC / @TramMuseum)

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Transit Maps says:

Phew! There’s not a lot more to say after Adam’s extensive rundown of this fantastic project. I love a well-researched, nicely drawn map, and this one ticks all those boxes for me. There’s enough visual cues taken from the official modern-day map for this map to look familiar to Melburnians, but it also has a life of its own. I love the deep brown colour at the top of the map with the operating companies’ logos reversed out of it, and there’s lots of interesting information at the bottom, too. Attractive and educational!

I agree with Adam’s “next version” suggestions: the stroked line for the cable car lines makes a lot of sense, both visually and metaphorically and it would be fun to see exactly how those cables crossed each other. As with the cable cars in San Francisco, those gripmen must have been incredibly strong and vigilant to ensure their grip jaws never entangled in a cable that crossed their route!

The legend could perhaps use some extra detail about the routes and operators, but not at the cost of reducing the informational text next to it: it’s a fine balancing act. For the most part, the text on the map itself does a good job of explaining which company operates which route, so it’s not a big deal in my eyes.

Overall, I think this is a great project with immense historical interest, and it looks great, too!