Ambitious $500k project sees 'tram bach' put back on the tracks

A Christchurch tram restoration group is about to undergo one of its most ambitious projects.

They're hoping to put a tram back on the tracks that been a family bach for over half a century.

The holiday is now over for Tram Number 194, 64 years after its retirement from service on the Christchurch tram tracks it has returned to the city, ready for restoration.

"It's spent more time - about twice as much - as a bach than as a tram," Tramway Historical Society president Stephen Taylor said.

That bach was Richard Holland's family's holiday pad - his grandparents bought the tram in the 1950s, and turned it into their own little holiday paradise on a farm in Oxford.

"It sleeps six in here - you got two bunk rooms," Mr Holland said. 

The family is gifting the old girl back to the Tramway Historical Society complete with its cast iron stove, kitchen sink and worn-out curtains.

They plan to get her back up and running at a cost of $500,000.

"It's the last of its kind that we are able to obtain," Mr Taylor said. "There's one or two others around but they're rusting wrecks or ruined wrecks."

It's an outcome Richard Holland couldn't have beared to see happen to his family's former holiday haven.

"We didn't want to see it go to wreck and ruin left on the farm and destroyed, so that's why we've done what we've done," Mr Holland explained.

The end of an era for the Holland family - as another chapter awaits this historic Christchurch tram.

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