Impact
The loss of so many trams put considerable strain on the Brisbane City Council Transport Department. Trams allocated to the depot that were in service at the time of the fire were temporarily stored at the Tramways workshops in Milton. The City Council admitted that both the trams and the depot had not been insured.
Initially, older-style trams were brought out of storage from other depots to assist with peak-hour demand, but in December 1962 tram services to Kalinga, Toowong, Rainworth and Bulimba Ferry (in the suburb of Newstead) were converted to diesel bus operation. These closures were the first significant route closures of the system and within 6½ years, the remainder of Brisbane's tram routes had been converted to diesel bus operation.
The City Council hired a number of buses from the New South Wales government, in a move which some saw as a publicity stunt by the then Lord Mayor, Alderman Clem Jones. The Courier-Mail newspaper revealed that the City Council had been storing several of its own buses, which could have been made available rather than hiring buses from New South Wales.
Irrespective of the brief and comparatively minor controversy over the use of the Sydney buses, Jones was able to argue that the availability of buses "to fill the breach" left by the fire was evidence of buses' greater operational flexibility compared to trams. One of the justifications subsequently raised by the Brisbane City Council when it decided in 1967 to abandon the tram system completely was the greater operational flexibility of buses.
After the fire a number of components, particularly trucks and wheels, were salvaged from destroyed trams and incorporated in eight new trams. These trams had a distinctive pale blue colour scheme and featured a small picture of a phoenix under the driver's windows, signifying that the trams had "risen from the ashes", and were popularly referred to as "phoenix cars".
Read more about this topic: Paddington Tram Depot Fire
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