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There’s a particular kind of joy that comes from watching your child do something they’re normally told not to. Climb into the driver’s seat of a vehicle. Ring a bell as many times as they like. Turn a big steering wheel that actually does something. At the Melbourne Tram Museum in Hawthorn, that’s more or less the entire point of the visit, and it’s why the place has become a quiet favourite among Melbourne parents with a train, bus or tram-obsessed kid at home.
It isn’t flashy. It’s a heritage tram depot with twenty restored trams parked under one roof, run largely by volunteers who clearly love what they do. But for a certain age group, it’s close to perfect.
What is the Melbourne Tram Museum, exactly?
The museum sits inside the old Hawthorn Tram Depot, a heritage-listed building on Wallen Road that dates back to 1916. It’s home to twenty fully restored trams, including a “toast-rack” style V-class from 1906 — one of the first electrified trams to run in Melbourne — along with several of the iconic green and cream W-class trams most Melburnians will recognise instantly. There’s also a Cable Ways exhibition covering Melbourne’s earlier cable tram network, which is worth ten minutes on its own if you’ve got an older child interested in how the city actually moved before electric trams took over.
None of the trams are roped off. Kids can climb aboard, sit in the driver’s position, spin the controller handle and reach for the bell cord. Volunteers are usually on hand to talk through how each tram worked, and on the day we visited, one of the older gentlemen running the museum handed our two boys a small paper ticket and a coin each — a tiny gesture, but it made the whole visit feel like they’d actually stepped back in time rather than just looked at old machines.
Is it good for young kids?
Genuinely, yes — with a caveat. It suits children roughly three and up, since younger toddlers won’t have the patience for the explanations but will still enjoy climbing on board. Our two spent close to ninety minutes there without any sign of boredom, mostly because there are enough trams that “driving” one doesn’t get old before you move on to the next. If your child has ever gone through a phase of wanting to ride every bus, train and tram route in the city (ours did, during Victoria’s free public transport period a while back), this is basically the payoff.
It’s not a big, polished attraction on the scale of somewhere like Melbourne Museum or Scienceworks, and there’s not much else to do nearby, so it works best as a standalone morning or a stop before lunch rather than a full day out.
Opening days, hours and admission
This is the part worth getting right before you go, because the museum doesn’t open every day — and turning up on the wrong Saturday is a genuinely common mistake.
According to the museum’s official visitor information, it’s open:
- The second and fourth Saturday of every month, 11am to 4pm (December is the second Saturday only)
- Selected Wednesdays, 10am to 3pm
Admission is by gold coin donation — the museum suggests $1 to $2 per person — and bookings aren’t required. Allow at least 30 minutes, though most families with young kids will happily stay for an hour or more.
Upcoming 2026 open days include 12 and 26 September, 10 and 24 October (plus Wednesday 21 October), and 14 and 28 November (plus Wednesday 18 November), with the 26 September date falling right in the middle of Victoria’s spring school holidays. It’s always worth double-checking the current list on the museum’s site before you head out, since dates can shift and the museum occasionally closes if extreme weather is forecast.
Getting there
The museum is at 8 Wallen Road, Hawthorn, tucked just off Riversdale Road. Parking is limited at the depot itself, but there’s space at the Wallen Road Reserve nearby.
By public transport, it’s an easy trip: hop on tram route 70 (Docklands–Wattle Park) or 75 (City–Vermont South) and get off at Stop 29, Riversdale Junction, then it’s a short walk down Wallen Road. Given the whole visit is about trams, arriving by one feels appropriate.
Part of the museum is wheelchair accessible, including the main hall and gift shop, though the heritage nature of the depot means not every tram or walkway can be reached. Companion Card holders get free entry when accompanying their carer.
A few tips before you go
Check the open-day list the night before, not the morning of — we’ve heard from other parents who drove out on an ordinary Saturday only to find the gates shut. Bring coins for the donation box, since it’s a small, volunteer-run museum rather than a ticketed attraction. And if your child is anything like ours, don’t expect to get through all twenty trams in one visit — they’ll want to “drive” the same one twice.
If you’re building this into a bigger day in the east, it pairs nicely with a wander down Glenferrie Road for lunch, or you can fold it into a longer list of free things to do these school holidays — it’s one of the better ones precisely because nobody seems to know about it yet.
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