Brisbane Tramway Museum

The Brisbane Tramway Museum is an Australian transport museum that has preserved a collection of trams and trolleybuses most of which operated in Brisbane from 1897 until 1969. The museum is located at Ferny Grove.

The Brisbane Tramway Museum Society was established in 1968, when it became apparent that the Brisbane City Council was preparing to close Brisbane's tram system. In 1972, a site at Ferny Grove was made available and a museum built, opening in June 1980.

As at 10 November 2005, the museum has a collection of 25 trams, 24 of which formerly operated on the Brisbane tram network. The 25th tram in the museum's collection ran in Sydney. The museum also has two Brisbane trolley-buses built on Sunbeam MF2B chassis. These are on static display. A number of trams in the museum's collection are operated on a short length of demonstration track 250 metres in length. The oldest operational tram in the museum's collection is No. 47, a "California Combination" or "Matchbox" tram, built in 1901. The newest tram in the collection is No. 554 a "Four Motor" tram built by the Brisbane City Council after the Paddington tram depot fire, and which entered service in 1964. Other operational trams include a 10 bench "Toastrack" tram No. 65, a small centre-aisle or "Baby Dreadnought" tram No. 99, No. 341, a "Dropcentre" tram and another "Four Motor" tram No. 429. A selection of these trams operate each Sunday afternoon, although operations are curtailed in the event of wet weather.

The museum's collection of support vehicles are all former Brisbane City Council Tramways Department vehicles and include a tower wagon used for repairing overhead wires, two welding trucks and a Scammel breakdown recovery truck which was formerly used as an artillery towing truck in the Second World War.

The museum houses an extensive photographic collection of Brisbane's tramway and street transport heritage, together with tickets and uniforms worn by staff of the tramway operators, a feature of which were the unusual "Foreign legion" caps (more correctly called kepis) worn by drivers and conductors until 1961 and inspectors until more recently.

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