It is 3 ft (914 mm) gauge, double track throughout, running down the middle of the road. It runs along the seafront promenade for approxi-mately 1.6 miles (2.6 km), from the southern terminus at the Victoria Pier, adjacent to the Isle of Man Sea Terminal, to Derby Castle station, the southern terminus of the Manx Electric Railway, where the workshops and sheds are located.
The tramway was built and initially operated by Thomas Lightfoot, a retired civil engineer from Sheffield. His service was introduced in 1876 between the bottom of what is now Summer Hill and the bottom of Broadway in the centre of today's promenade adjacent to the Villa Marina. In the earliest days the track was expanded, and passing loops and long crossovers added so that by 1891 the line ran double track the entire length of the promenade, much as it does today. From opening it has operated every year, except for a period during the Second World War.
In 1882, Lightfoot sold the line to Isle of Man Tramways Ltd, later the Isle of Man Tramways & Electric Power Co. Ltd, which also owned the Manx Electric Railway. The company went into liquidation in 1900 as a con-sequence of a banking collapse. The tramway was sold by the liquidator to Douglas Corporation in 1902. Since 1927 the tramway has run in summer only.
In January 2016, Douglas Corporation announced that the tramway had run for the last time the previous September and that they had closed it as it was not financially viable. The tramway had made a loss of £263,000 in 2015. After an online petition attracted more than 2,000 signatures, the House of Keys es-tablished a committee to look into ways of retaining the iconic horse trams.
Today the trams run from the end of March until the start of November, and are operated by Isle of Man Transport as part of their Heritage Railway offering. Service is provided by 23 tramcars and some 45 horses. There have been several types of tramcar, and at least one of each type has been retained. Most services are maintained by "closed toastracks", with winter saloons and open toastracks also in semi-regular service.

The terminus building was closed for rebuilt during Covid and reopened in 2022.

Photos:© David Kelly 2013 and Isle of Man Transport 2022, with thanks