Wellington Cable Car Museum - What's On Display

See milestones for key events in the museum's history.

In the late 1990s, the Wellington City Council agreed to fund work to stabilise, conserve and refurbish the original cable car winding house as a museum. The Wellington Museums Trust was commissioned to develop and operate this new facility.

    The Wellington Cable Car Museum opened its doors on 5 December 2000, with the aim of preserving and promoting Wellington's early cable car system, recognising its special contribution to the city's heritage.
    Plans to develop a museum at the top of the cable car route were first put forward in 1979, when the council resolved to replace the old winding house with a purpose-built museum and to display one of the three original grip car and trailer sets. In the mid 1980s, it was decided to save the old building for possible use as the museum.
    However, for the next 14 years, the museum proposal languished. The winding house was used for a variety of purposes until 1993, when the council again made a provisional decision to demolish it.
    Fortunately, a group of people were determined to preserve the winding gear in its original site in the winding house and to transform the old building into a museum to house the restored cable cars. Wellington Cable Car Heritage was formed to achieve these aims and its protests had the desired effect. In 1994, the city council finally agreed to convert the building into the long-promised cable car museum.


Wellington Cable Car Heritage volunteers

A roaring success
The Wellington Museums Trust was commissioned to develop and manage the museum project, while volunteers from Wellington Cable Car Heritage undertook the restoration of a grip cable car and trailer. Conservation advice and materials needed for the restoration process were funded by a council grant and support from the Environment Committee of the New Zealand Lottery Grants Board. The Pamela Williams Family Trust and Pub Charity Inc also provided assistance for the fit-out.

The Wellington Cable Car Museum was opened by the then Mayor, Mark Blumsky, on 5 December 2000. The only living descendants of the cable car system designer James Edward Fulton were present: granddaughter Ngaire Bajko and great-grandson Michael Bajko.


	Minister of Tourism Damien O'Connor and Mayor Kerry Prendergast with Grip Car 3 at the official opening of the museum extension

Expansion plans
While original visitor estimates for the museum were for about 90,000 people a year, it was soon attracting upwards of 200,000 people. In 2004, the Wellington Museums Trust initiated a redevelopment and restoration project so that visitor facilities could be improved and extended, and so that another grip car from the collection could be restored and put on display.
The new extension, which attracted a local architecture award, was officially opened on the museum's fifth birthday, December 5 2005. It has doubled the size of the building and significantly improved the visitor experience (click here for more on the extension).
The extension has also provided space for the display of Grip Car 3, which was fully conserved and restored over a nine-month period (click here for more on the restoration).