page_title: Trams in Sydney
section_title: North Shore Lines
hierarchical_section_title: Trams in Sydney / North Shore Lines
caption_attribution_description: English: Wynyard Former Tram Tunnels looking North
context_page_description: The Sydney tramway network served the inner suburbs of Sydney, Australia from 1879 until 1961. In its heyday, it was the largest in Australia, the second largest in the Commonwealth of Nations, and one of the largest in the world. The network was heavily worked, with about 1,600 cars in service at any one time at its peak during the 1930s.
  Patronage peaked in 1945 at 405 million passenger journeys. Its maximum street trackage totalled 291 km in 1923.
context_section_description: A feature of these lines was the underground tram terminus at Wynyard railway station (the only one in Australia), and the tracks over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Trams ran from Blue Street, North Sydney over a now-demolished steel arch bridge over the Harbour Bridge Roadway, then over the eastern side of the harbour bridge (now used by the Cahill Expressway), through a tram platform at Milsons Point similar to the railway station on the opposite side, and dived underground into platforms 1 and 2 of Wynyard station. These platforms were converted into a car park after the tramway's closure on 28 June 1958. Wynyard station's railway platforms are thus numbered 3-6.
  The line along Military Road, opened in September 1893, was the first permanent electric tramway in Sydney and New South Wales.
  The first part of the North Sydney tramway system was a double-track cable tramway which started at the original Milsons Point wharf, located where the north pylon of the Harbour Bridge is now. The line originally extended via Alfred Street (now Alfred Street South), Junction Street (now Pacific Highway), Blue Street and Miller Streets to the winding engine house and depot at Ridge Street. It used cable grip cars called "dummies" and unpowered trailer cars, similar to the large Melbourne cable tramway system but quite different from the surviving lines in San Francisco, where everything is combined in a single vehicle.
  The original cable line was extended via Miller and Falcon Streets to Crows Nest, and later the whole line was electrified and extensions were built to various termini around the Lower North Shore.
  The history of the North Sydney tramway system can be divided into three periods – the first from the original opening in 1886 to 1909, when the McMahons Point line opened. The second period covers the time until the Wynyard line was opened across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932, and the third from then until the general closure of the system in 1958.
caption: Former Tram Tunnels leading to disused Platforms 1 and 2 at Wynyard station
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