"What a variety are pictured here! Double deck 'balloon' cars, single deckers including open topped cars and various illuminated cars, a specialty of the town." —York Model Engineers newsletterIn the early 1930s the tramcar in Blackpool was at a crossroads; the system needed investment in both new track and new trams while there was a serious threat that the "town" routes might be converted to bus operation.The appointment of Walter Luff as the new general ...

Although there had been experiments with the use of a new form of transport - the 'trackless tram' (better known as the trolleybus) - during the first decade of the 20th century, it was in June 1911 that Bradford and Leeds became the country's pioneering operators of trolleybuses. There had been earlier experimental users – in places like Hove and London – and as the tide turned against the tram in many towns and cities, the trolleybus became a popular alternative with London becoming, for...

A photographic overview of the little-known cars and engineers that kept British tramways running smoothly and safely.While generally unfamiliar to the passengers that used tramways, works trams were an essential facet of the efficient operation of any system—large or small—and this book presents an overview of the great variety of works trams that served the first generation of tramways in the British Isles.Although construction of most tramways was left t...

During the history of Britain's electric tramcar fleets, many thousands were manufactured of which the vast majority saw out their operational life with a single owner. However, for several hundred there was to be a second – if not, in certain cases, a third – career with a new operator. Almost from the dawn of the electric era in the late 19th century tramcars were loaned or bought and sold between operators. The reasons for this were multifarious. Sometimes the aspirations of the origina...

"A fine tribute to the thousand-strong fleet of E/1 trams which gave such sterling service to Londoners for nearly fifty years, including two world wars." —Tramway ReviewProbably the single most numerous of tramcar constructed for operation on Britain's first generation electric tramways, the London County Council's 'E/1' class had an operational history that stretched for almost fifty years. The first were produced towards the end of the first decade of the 20th c...

The first volume in the ‘Lost Tramways of Ireland’ series features the history of the Belfast system, including its origins as a horse tramway in the 1870s, its conversion to electric traction in the early 20th century, its role in two World Wars, the conversion of the network to bus and trolleybus operation from the late 1940s and the system’s eventual demise in 1954. Amongst the locations featured are Glengormley, Greencastle and Bloomfield as well as York Road and Queen’s Quay railway s...

"Waller dips successfully into the social history north of the border during the first half of the twentieth century, when trams were the urban transport kings." —EvergreenFocusing on Scotland, this book provides an overview of the history of tramways north of the border from the 1940s, when the first horse-drawn service linking Inchture village to Inchture station opened, through to the closure of the last traditional tramway—Glasgow—in 1962.Concentrating ...

It was to the south-west of Leeds that one of the key lines in the development of Britain's railway network – the Middleton Railway – established the principle of seeking parliamentary sanction for the construction of a new form of transport. Five decades later in the early nineteenth century it was again the Middleton Railway that was at the forefront of the use of steam – rather than animal – power to move coal from colliery to market. From the early 1830s through until the early years o...

Now preserved for almost sixty years, the former Midland Railway branch from Keighley to Oxenhope to the west of Bradford may not be one of the country's longest – indeed it only stretches for just under five miles – but it is one of the country's most popular preserved lines. With a history stretching back to the mid-nineteenth century, the Keighley & Worth Valley provided an essential link for the communities that it served for almost a century. The harsh economic realities of the 1950s ...

Although there had been experiments with the use of a new form of transport - the 'trackless tram' (better known as the trolleybus) - during the first decade of the 20th century, it was in June 1911 that Bradford and Leeds became the country's pioneering operators of trolleybuses. Some of the earliest operators were in Lancashire, northern England and Scotland; indeed Scotland can lay claim to having both the first system in Britain to close – Dundee in 1914 – and the last to open – Glasgo...

Part of a four-volume history of trolleybus systems across Britain, this book covers operations based in Wales, the Midlands, and East Anglia.The first British experiments with trolleybus systems began in the first decade of the twentieth century. They were meant to be a low-cost means of supplementing tram services in lightly trafficked areas and providing links to communities not served by existing tram routes. But when the Bradford Corporation introduced fully e...

Although there had been experiments with the use of a new form of transport - the 'trackless tram' (better known as the trolleybus) - during the first decade of the 20th century, it was in June 1911 that Bradford and Leeds became the country's pioneering operators of trolleybuses. Whilst, in Leeds, the trolleybus was destined to have a fairly peripheral role (and finally disappeared in 1928), in Bradford, perhaps as a consequence of the hills surrounding the city centre which represented i...