Head back in time at a slow trot

THE clip-clopping of Clydesdale hooves is set to be heard throughout Lake Wendouree’s gardens precinct this weekend.

Australia’s oldest operating tram, horse tram number one, will be run by the Ballarat Tramway Museum for the first time in four years this Saturday, 22 April.

Museum marketing and facilities manager Peter Waugh said the tram will make about 10 trips between 11am and 2.30pm and it can carry up to 40 people at a time.

“It’s on the tracks very rarely, so we’re excited to have it back out,” he said. “If you haven’t had a ride on it before, you will be surprised by the slow speed of it. It quietly plods along.

“It’s not like a stage coach, thundering down the road. It just ambles along at a little more than a brisk walking pace and takes us back to a time which wasn’t as frantic as today.

“It’s gentle and it’s quiet compared to the electric trams.”

The tram was built in 1887, and as the first of its kind, was exhibited at the South Australian Exhibition in Adelaide that year.

“Then it was disassembled, brought to Ballarat, reassembled, and used as a pattern to make another 17 trams,” Mr Waugh said.

“It was still running with horses until 1913, and then it was used as a trailer behind the normal electric trams for another, at least, 10 years.”

Horse tram number one has two levels, and Mr Waugh said the upper deck gives people a new, higher perspective of the gardens and the lake they won’t have seen before.

“We’ve got ads on the tram for one of the local opticians that was around at the time, and for Sutton’s Pianos and Organs,” he said.

“These weren’t original to the tram but are Ballarat businesses that were contemporary with it.”

The two horses pulling the tram are coming from Sandy Creek Clydesdales near Maldon.

Horse tram number one will run even if it is raining, and the cost of a ride also includes trips on BTM’s electric trams, and entry to the museum.