Post effort 8/10
My Sydney friend, aka Mr Plastic/Silicon/Steroid/Muscles embarrasses me now with his quick writing. So I apologize for him. He was well ejacated at a private international school in Hong Kong and so he does know how to write correct.
I spent an hour or so with books and the net to give him an answer to his question. Do you think I gave him too much information? My love of the late Sydney tram system goes on, so after such a question, I could not help myself and sent him a couple of pictures asking him to identify the location. (I changed the file names)
got a question.
there is a tram that runs from roselle, glebe, to the key and i'm wondering it runs on this old track.
is it possible that they put the tram on an old train track or is the size of rail different so trams can't use train tracks?
That's interesting. I didn't know that.
What I do know is that the Lilyfield tram doesn't go near the Quay (yet!). It sort of ends at Central Station in a loop, using the old Pitt Street and Castlereagh Street tram reservations in Belmore Park.
In Melbourne, trams were of a different wheel gauge to the trains, that is the gap across between the wheels, or tracks if you like. Let me see, are you old enough to remember the train to St Kilda and Port Melbourne? For safety's sake, best I say no. Anyway when they were converted to light rail, they had to move one track. Not sure if it was closer or further apart.
But in Sydney they were the same and so Sydney trams could and did use the railway lines. They used to use a steam tram, the original Sydney trams, and tow the newer electric trams via a long way around on a railway line to get them to the north shore before the bridge was built. At one point they used to also have a barge to carry the trams across the harbour. When the tram line to Ryde was completed, the tram line was joined to the railway line at Ryde Station and so it was a much shorter journey to get a tram onto the railway line to go wherever.
That much I knew.
But what I didn't know was that the Lilyfield tram does travel on an old railway line. It was only a goods line (Balmain Goods Line?) and joined the Liverpool train line at Hurlstone Park (Hurlstone Park may only be a station now, not a suburb, so Dulwich Hill will do)
At the other end, the tram only seems to depart the old railway line when it turns and runs past Paddy's Market. The old railway line continued on to the southern end of Central Station. A bit of the train line looks to be still there and runs into Powerhouse Museum.
As for Lilyfield, from what I can see, the tram line still joins the railway line at the Lilyfield terminus and so with something to tow it, a tram could still run on the railway line. This assumes that the present tram is still of the same gauge as the railway lines and the tracks did not have to be shifted, but from what I recall, they didn't.
Was interesting to work all that out.
(And I attached a couple of pics I found on the net, thanks Ben, of the Lilyfield tram emerging from what was a railway tunnel and the Lilyfield tram travelling on the train viaduct.)
i think u are right.
i think the tram line doens't go all the way to the quay i thought it did, i've never taken it. i'll check it out though.
baby boomer generation is to blame for that, wankers removing trams and replacing them with slow, ugly, polluting buses which nobody wants to get and doesn't.
clover is fighting to bring trams back.
Where is this? Hint, eastern suburbs.

could be near edgecliff there heading toward what is now edgecliff station? the northern end of paddington thru darlo past st vinnies hospital perhaps?
it's the only area i can think of that's raised.
Later
correction..
friend of mine is just here and looked at this pic.
he was saying it's a road not what i thought that is now the train line.
it's the back road that goes from darlinghurst near the wall past st vincents hospital up to paddington.
it's now a crappy rough old bridge that's awful on you tyres as u drive over it sort of concretey.
The 'friend' would be his seventy year old sugar daddy who would know full well where the tram viaduct was and probably rode on a tram across it.