Iconic Tram Cities of the World — Lisbon, San Francisco, Hong Kong

Most cities that built tram networks in the late nineteenth century had pulled them up again by the late twentieth. Buses and cars promised flexibility, and councils were happy to call the tram a charming relic of a slower age. A handful of cities refused. Lisbon kept its yellow Remodelados climbing the Alfama. San Francisco saved its cable cars from the wrecking ball and later rebuilt its historic streetcar line along Market Street. Hong Kong never stopped running its Ding Ding — still the only fully double-decker tram fleet operating anywhere in the world. These three cities did not preserve their trams by accident. They preserved them because the trams were already inseparable from the identity of the place.

Lisbon — The Remodelado and the Climb to Alfama

Lisbon’s Carris network once stretched across the whole city. By the 1990s most of it had been replaced by buses, but five lines survived because the streets they served were physically impossible for anything else. The Remodelados — small four-wheel cars built in the 1930s and rebuilt repeatedly since — climb gradients that would defeat a modern articulated tram, and turn corners that would not fit a standard bus. Tram 28 is the most famous: a winding route from Martim Moniz through Graça, Alfama and Estrela that has become a working museum piece carrying both commuters and tourists in equal numbers. The wooden interiors, brass handrails and clattering destination roller blinds are not heritage affectations; they are the original fittings, maintained by the operator because replacing them would cost more than keeping them running. Lisbon’s preservation argument is the most pragmatic of the three: the trams stayed because nothing else fitted the streets. The visual culture that grew around them — the lemon-yellow livery against pale limestone facades, the Portuguese tile-work in the background — is now a marketing identity the city would not surrender even if a cheaper bus could climb the hill. Anyone who has ridden a 28 understands within five minutes why the route survived where Brisbane’s didn’t. Geography refused to let it die.

San Francisco — Cable Cars and the Muni F-Market

San Francisco fought two preservation battles. The first was in 1947, when mayor Roger Lapham announced the city would dismantle the cable car system as obsolete. Friedel Klussmann, a civic activist, mobilised a campaign that put the cable cars on the ballot and saved them by a landslide. They have run continuously since, are now designated a National Historic Landmark — the only moving one — and are operated by a Powell-Hyde and California Street fleet that climbs grades up to 21 per cent. The U.S. National Park Service records them as the last manually-operated cable car system in the world. The second battle was quieter. In the 1990s, San Francisco rebuilt the F-Market line along the Embarcadero and Market Street, then populated it with restored historic streetcars from around the world — Milan, Philadelphia, Melbourne (yes, a real Australian W-class operates there today). The F-Market is not a museum line; it carries 20,000 passengers a day and integrates with the Muni system. It works because the city decided that running working historic vehicles was a better investment than restoring them as static exhibits — a position Australian preservation bodies are slowly catching up to.

Hong Kong — The Ding Ding, Last of the Double-Deckers

Hong Kong’s tramway has run along the north shore of Hong Kong Island since 1904. Locals call it the Ding Ding for the bell the driver rings at every stop. It is the only fully double-decker tram fleet still in service anywhere in the world — Blackpool’s heritage line runs a few, and Alexandria has rebuilt some, but Hong Kong runs 165 of them in daily revenue service across six routes from Kennedy Town to Shau Kei Wan. Unlike Lisbon and San Francisco, the Ding Ding never came close to closure. It is the cheapest public transport in the city — a flat fare regardless of distance — and it carries roughly 200,000 passengers a day along Hennessy Road, Des Voeux Road and the other arteries of the island’s commercial spine. The trams themselves have been rebuilt repeatedly; the fleet number you board today shares almost nothing with its 1950s equivalent except the basic two-truck layout. But the destination blinds remain on the front, the bell still rings, and the top deck still gives the best slow-moving tour of central Hong Kong available. For an architectural and cultural overview of the system, the Hong Kong Tramways heritage page is the official source.

Why These Three and Not Sydney or Brisbane?

Sydney once had the second-largest tram network in the British Empire. Brisbane built one of the most extensive systems in the southern hemisphere. Both were dismantled inside a generation. The standard explanation — rising car ownership, post-war optimism, road-building lobbies — is true as far as it goes, but it is not the full story. The three cities that kept their trams had something Australia did not: a constituency willing to fight for them at the moment the buses arrived. Klussmann in San Francisco mobilised a vote. Lisbon’s tram supporters had geography on their side. Hong Kong never debated the question because the trams were already woven into the city’s daily rhythm. In Sydney and Brisbane, by contrast, the trams had no organised defenders when the closure decisions were made — and once a network is removed, restoring it costs ten times more than maintaining it would have. We have written about this loss in more detail in our piece on the lost trams of Sydney and the parallel decline in Brisbane between 1885 and 1969. Both pieces lay out the cost in detail, and explain why heritage scrolls of those routes carry so much weight for the families who lived along them.

What Lisbon, San Francisco and Hong Kong Got Right

The lesson from these three cities is not that every old tram should be saved. It is that the visual and operational signature of a tram network is part of a city’s identity, and that identity has a measurable economic value. Lisbon’s Remodelados generate millions of euros a year in tourism revenue on top of their fare-box take. San Francisco’s cable cars are one of the most photographed working vehicles on the planet. Hong Kong’s Ding Ding is woven into film, advertising and the city’s own self-image at every level. Australia’s tram-preservation movements — at Loftus in NSW, Bylands in Victoria, St Kilda in South Australia and Whiteside in Brisbane — keep the engineering knowledge alive, and they do important work. But they cannot replace the experience of riding a tram through the city it was built for. Our pieces on Melbourne’s iconic tram network — the only Australian city to keep its system intact — and on Hobart’s pioneering cable trams show what was at stake. Heritage canvas scrolls of Lisbon’s Tram 28, San Francisco’s Powell-Hyde line or Hong Kong’s Hennessy Road route are increasingly popular among Australian customers who have travelled in those cities and want a piece of that visual memory on their wall.

Bring a Piece of These Cities Home

Our Design Your Own tool lets you build a destination scroll for any of the three networks — Tram 28, the F-Market, or Hong Kong Tramways — using authentic typography and the original livery palette. Or browse the pre-built international scrolls in our main shop. Every piece is hand-finished in our Noosa and Booragoon workshops, printed on heavyweight canvas with brass fittings, and dispatched with a free proof before printing. Lead times and freight options live on the shipping page.