Preservation
The W-class tramcars are highly popular trams in preservation both throughout Australia and around the world.
A number of W class trams were used in the filming of the HBO mini-series The Pacific, including W3-class tram number 667.
A number of W-class trams have been sent overseas, including five that went to Seattle between 1978 and 1993, where they operated as Seattle's own heritage streetcar line, George Benson Waterfront Streetcar Line, between 1982 and 2005. Since 1990, public outrage over the sale of these popular trams to overseas interest has forced an embargo to be placed on the sale of these trams to any overseas interest.
In February 2004, after some years of negotiation, a W-Class tram was shipped to Edmonton as an ambassador for the City of Melbourne. The tram operates as part of the High Level Bridge Streetcar fleet connecting Old Strathcona to Downtown.
Two unrelated MATAs, the Dallas MATA and the Memphis MATA both run W-class trams on their downtown streetcar service. A highly modified W class tram began running in 2009 along River Street in Savannah, Georgia, its AC motors powered by biodiesel-fueled generators.
In 2005 a tram was restored at a cost of $25,000 and given as a wedding present from the Victorian Government to Princess Mary and Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark. Shipping line Maersk transported the tram to Denmark free of charge, waiving the estimated bill of $40,000.
In 2010, New Zealand expressed interest in obtaining a large percentage of stored W-class trams for its heritage tramway in Christchurch, no response has yet been given on behalf of VicTrack, who currently have ownership of the mothballed trams.
Read more about this topic: W-class Melbourne Tram
Famous quotes containing the word preservation:
“Men are not therefore put to death, or punished for that their theft proceedeth from election; but because it was noxious and contrary to men’s preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest, inasmuch as to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and maketh men’s wills such as men would have them.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“The bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self.... And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
“If there is ANY THING which it is the duty of the WHOLE PEOPLE to never entrust to any hands but their own, that thing is the preservation and perpetuity, of their own liberties, and institutions.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)