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 As a result, three companies were registered in Cape Town in 1901 by the
Syndicate - the Camps Bay Tramways Company Limited, the Oranjezicht
Estates Company Limited and Cape Marine Suburbs Limited.
Camps Bay entered the Twentieth Century with a state of the art
tourist attraction - a spectacular tram ride whose route gave
enthralled visitors glimpses of unsurpassed views of mountain
and sea.
Marischal Murray fondly recalled these trams.
“The first tram went through to Camps Bay from Cape Town...on the
King’s Birthday, 9th November, 1901. The cars were long, low singledeckers,
chocolate and cream in colour. Some of them had in the centre
a small glassed-in saloon. At St John’s Road...they branched off for Kloof
Road and the mountain route to Camps Bay. It always gave us a thrill
to do this section of the journey by night. At the Round Church the cars
switched on a powerful headlight which threw an eerie sweeping beam
across the then deserted slopes between the top of Queens Road and
Camps Bay cars. The only sound to be heard at night was a peculiar
whine, distinctive of the Camps Bay tram...‘Round the Mountain by
Camps Bay Tram’ became a popular, and a very cheap, excursion before
the sophisticated days of motor cars. In 1938 the Camps Bay lines closed
down, and the cream-and-chocolate trams became another memory of
the past.
 ”This tramline was the result of astute town planning by the Mills
Syndicate, property developers, who realized that if accessibility could be
improved, Camps Bay would become a very popular suburb. Previous
schemes to have a public transport system to Camps Bay had failed
because research showed that the roads were too steep and the population
too small for profit. The Mills Syndicate planned to build a tramline to
provide convenient and quick access from Camps Bay to the City. With
the City only a few minutes away, Camps Bay would become attractive to
potential home owners and their property in the Bay would become very
desirable. As the tramline was only a means to an end, which was to
provide access to their acres, they intended to sell it to Cape Electric
Tramways once their aim had been achieved.
With funding from the Corner House group, they bought up all the
freehold land in Camps Bay, subdivided it into building lots and developed
roads and tramlines. On 14 December 1901 the syndicate registered the
three companies aforementioned. A fourth company was registered in
London as a holding company called the Cape Town Consolidated
Tramway and Land Company Limited, whose secretary, S W Jameson, was
also the secretary to Cape Electric Tramways Company. Julius Wernher
and Otto Beit of London held one third of the shares in this company with
Emile d’Erlanger and associates holding one sixth and the rest being held
by small shareholders.
No part of this
publication may be reproduced without the prior written consent
of both the publisher and Holiday Rentals in Cape Town
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