The Ballarat Tramway Museum's collection consists of two major parts:

1. Our Tramcars - see Fleet Register

2. Our Small Items Collection.

The BTM has been building and cataloguing its small item collection since 1995. At the time of writing for example we have over 1000 colour slides, 500 colour photographs and 1400 black and white photographs. This number is being added to all the time. We also have an extensive collection of tickets, paperwork, uniforms, historical documents, newspaper cuttings, posters, maps, Ballarat booklets and employee registers that is available to researchers.

Many of our photographs have the street scenes in which the trams ran, people getting on and off trams showing what they were wearing at the time of the photograph (fashions of the day) and motor vehicles or individual buildings and many other elements of daily life in Ballarat until 1971.

Our paperwork and document collection shows the way the companies operated the Ballarat system, employee names (although not as extensive in the SEC era as we would like) and correspondence with other authorities. We have also collected extensively on the Ballarat Tramway Preservation Society (BTPS) days and now the Ballarat Tramway Museum (BTM) itself. The BTPS/BTM have been operating the Wendouree Parade section for longer than the State Electricity Commission did.

Our collection is growing all the time, and we are always on the lookout for material associated with the Ballarat and other Victorian provincial tramways and ourselves. Any offers of donations of material, photographs, small items, tickets etc would always be welcome. Any offers would be assessed against the Museum's Collection Policy. If you would like to consider making a donation or a gift, we would welcome chatting with you beforehand in case you have any queries.

The collection is best accessed by making an appointment. It is catalogued using the db Textworks system. This is relatively easily used, after a short demonstration.

The Museum itself is Accredited with Museums Australia Vic Branch, Museum Accreditation Program. Click here for details.?

Any queries should be directed to our Museum Services Manager, Warren Doubleday warren.doubleday@btm.org.au