“My friends and family joke that I am a tram baby,” laughs Roberto D’Andrea.
Born in 1961 to Italian migrants [Giuseppe and Immacolata] who met, courted, and even married along Melbourne’s No. 70 tram line, Roberto’s earliest memories of trams are foetal ones – safely nestled in his mother’s womb as she commuted through the city. Little did he know that that would not only shape his career as a beloved Melbourne tram conductor but also inspire a unique cross-continental cultural movement: Tramjatra.
The Sundarban Tramjatra, held in March 2025 in Kolkata, was a four-day festival that marked 30 years of tramway friendship between Kolkata and Melbourne. This year’s edition was themed around the Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest on Earth, which, like Kolkata’s tramways, faces immense environmental and political threats. The festival saw a Kolkata tram transformed into a moving artwork featuring biodiversity-themed designs by patua artist Sarna Chitrakar and illustrator Sumantra Mukherjee, supported by public events, and folk performances.
But where is Roberto D’Andrea in all this, you ask? He is the beating heart of this enduring movement.
Calcutta calling
For Roberto, the tram was never just a mode of transport. It was a stage, a classroom, a community hub – and at times, a protest platform. After traveling the world in the 1980s and seeing trams vanish from urban landscapes in North America and Europe, he returned to a Melbourne that had defiantly kept its tramways alive.
“Conductors had a smart looking uniform, leather bags and old-style paper and cardboard tickets. It was like stepping back in time. I wanted to become a tram conductor,” he says with fond nostalgia.
Each depot had a group of theatrical-entertaining conductors (affectionately called ‘Connies’ by Victorians).
“Drivers and conductors supported each other, comrades. I was also a conductor trainer and then became a tram driver. I loved driving the old wooden-bodied W Class trams,” he shares.
Eventually, he became a trammie at the South Melbourne Tram Depot, which Roberto calls “the most ‘eccentric’ of all eight Melbourne depots, with more entertaining connies and trammies that were proud of Melbourne’s unique tram history”.
In October 1994, Roberto’s tram journey took a transcendent turn. A girlfriend, Sarina, convinced him to join her on a holiday to India. Before departing, fellow tram enthusiasts (also called ‘gunzels’) told him that the only tramway to survive in India was the Calcutta Tramways Company. Naturally, on his first day on Indian soil Roberto managed to hear the tram bells (called gongs) at a distance from his Chowringee accommodation.
“All I had to do was follow the sound until I reached the Esplanade tram terminus in central Calcutta. The trammies there took me to the Belgachia Depot… we played like tram children, comparing life as a trammie in Melbourne and Calcutta,” he remembers.
Trams matter
From that serendipitous encounter, the Tramjatra program was born. A grassroots celebration of tram culture and sustainability, Tramjatra became a creative alliance between Melbourne and Kolkata tram lovers. In 1996, Roberto returned to India with a “travelling tram show” launching a movement that has since seen 16 trams in Kolkata and six in Melbourne transformed into moving artworks – canvases for messages of cultural diversity, climate action, and community resilience.
“Melbourne has a wonderful tram decorating tradition that formally started in the late 1970s,” he explains. “This is the tradition that we took to Calcutta. Our 1997 Calbourne Tram was a co-design between Michael Douglas (co-founder of Tramjatra), myself and the tramway workers from Belgachia depot. Friendship trams with names like Bondhu (meaning friend in Bengali), Calbourne, Sundari Sunrise, Cricket, Baccha, Paribeshbandhu, Gitanjali (an ode to Rabindranath Tagore’s book), 20th anniversary trams in both cities, Durga (Hindu goddess) and two 150th anniversary trams preceded this year’s Sundarban Tramjatra tram.”
Despite political roadblocks and route decommissions, Roberto’s resolve is unwavering. “Kolkata has a perfectly good tram system. In an age of climate emergency, we should be investing in trams, not dismantling them.”
Today, trams are making a global comeback in cities from Edinburgh to San Diego to help lower congestion, carbon emissions and air pollution. Roberto’s decades-long mission to preserve trams in Australia and India deserves attention.
“Trams are more than vehicles – they’re symbols,” he says. “Of inclusivity, of history, of resistance. They connect us physically, emotionally, and culturally.”
And while he remains based in Melbourne, his heart is permanently docked between two depots: South Melbourne and Belgachia.
“Each Tramjatra is a new beginning,” he says. “It’s not just about preserving the past, it’s about imagining a better future.” Roberto D’Andrea’s Tramjatra
