Melbourne's Vintage Tram Restaurant Could Be Returning to the Tracks

It seems Melbourne's historic tramcar restaurants have been saved from extinction, two weeks after it was announced the tourist attraction's vehicles had been deemed unsafe and were no longer allowed to operate.

As revealed by The Age last night, the famed moving restaurant has now been given a second chance, with Public Transport Victoria (PTV) offering to hook the company up with a newly upgraded W8-class tram while its own carriages await upgrade works.

Colonial Tramcar Restaurant CEO Paul O'Brien took to Facebook last month to share the reasons behind the shutdown, blaming "a bureaucratic deadlock with Yarra Trams". The company had reportedly been given just two weeks to make safety improvements to its carriages in order to keep running, though were unable to schedule in for the necessary works until at least 2020.

The 35-year-old attraction has proved it's got quite the backing, regardless of any safety concerns — we saw a lot of disappointed comments on our original story, and over 6000 people signing a change.org petition calling for Yarra Trams and Minister for Public Transport Jacinta Allan to step in and help save it.

According to The Age, following a meeting with PTV chief executive Jeroen Weimar, the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant will now get to borrow an upgraded W8-Class tram from this November, and, after a bit of schedule shuffling, its own vehicles will get in to see the tram doctor from as early as this December.

Should it choose to take PTV up on its offer, Colonial would have to pay for both the fit-out of the loaned tram and the major upgrades to its own historic trams, which could be costly. Either way, it looks like it won't be too long before the tramcar will be rolling slowly through the city again.

Via The Age.