Vintage Tramway Festival 2021

About Vintage Tramway Festival 2021

The annual Vintage Tramway Festival is a celebration of the former Sydney tramway system, once one of the largest systems in the world. The Sydney Vintage Tramway Festival this year commemorates the 60th Anniversary of the closure of Sydney's first electric tramway system.

But it’s not just tram rides, our displays include electric trams from around Australia and around the world, a steam tram motor, a Sydney trolleybus, and tramway maintenance vehicles and machinery.

A coffee van will be on site, and we have a small kiosk for snacks, ice creams, and cold drinks.

Your ticket price includes admission to the Museum and tram rides for the day.

About the Museum

The Sydney Tramway Museum is now over 60 years old, and from the beginning has been owned and operated by volunteers. We are non-profit, and we receive no ongoing funding from government. It is ticket sales and donations that allow us to keep going. If you’d like to make a donation (donations over $2 are tax deductible), and/or get involved, please speak to us when you visit.

Covid Safety

While the Museum is a largely open site, capacity of trams is restricted for distancing purposes. To ensure that visitors get fair opportunity to ride, we will be limiting the number of visitors. Pre-purchasing tickets is recommended.

There is no need to wear a mask in the outdoor areas, but persons over 12 will be required to wear a mask when on board trams or in the Display Hall. Please bring your masks with you – the Museum as a volunteer operated non-profit organisation cannot provide free masks for visitors.

Family Deals

We know that ‘family’ comes in many shapes, so we don’t have a ‘family’ ticket, but we do offer family deals. Pay for the first three members of your family, and then the rest of the children in the immediate family are free. Children under 5 are free.

To manage numbers, individual tickets are required for every person, please select the correct tickets for all children including free tickets.

¹ Wheelchairs, prams, etc.
The Museum site is wheelchair accessible, but the trams themselves are heritage vehicles - many of them over 80 years old - and typically have two or more steps to enter, and narrow doorways. We have a platform from which wheelchair customers can board a tram, but on the Festival day the large number of visitors makes it difficult to operate a tram from the platform. It may be possible to run a wheelchair-accessible trip on the Festival day, but this is not assured and if it does happen it is likely to be mid-afternoon.

Some of the trams have very high steps which people with reduced mobility may need assistance on. At the main tram stop in the Museum grounds, we can provide portable steps to make boarding easier, but these are not available at either the Sutherland (Waratah Park) or National Park termini.

Many of the trams have doorways which are too narrow to fit a pram through, but there will be spaces where you can leave your pram while you ride the tram.

Weather

The Museum has an indoor display area, but the real action is outdoors, with not much shelter. Come prepared for the weather – sunscreen and hats, and/or wet weather gear. The weather will have to be pretty extreme to prevent the Festival happening. Tram operations on the National Park line may be suspended if the National Park is closed due to bushfire risk, but trams will continue to operate on the Museum line.