RAILS IN THE ROAD: A History of Tramways

Ever since the first horse drawn trams wobbled onto the road in the 1870s, the status of these useful vehicles has been debated. Did they represent an outdated concept, or might they hold the key to a flexible future? The tram's Edwardian heyday was followed by a mid-20th century decline, but in the 21st century a number of Britain's major cities, including Sheffield, Manchester, Nottingham and Edinburgh, not to mention London's pioneering Docklands Light Railway, have reinstated a fixed-rail model of public transport. This comprehensive book tells the detailed story of Britain's tram systems, with fascinating archive photos on every page. The first horsedrawn street tramways opened in London and Liverpool in 1870, and in Dublin, Belfast and Cork two years later. Glasgow was the first city to embrace steam trams, and a few years later, in 1883, a battery tram was trialled in London, with an overhead trolley wire service being introduced in Leeds in 1891. Although a cable tram was in use on Highgate Hill for a time, by the end of the century electric trams with a pantograph had become the norm. An archive photo in Clapham High Street suggests that, although the buses of the time were also horse-drawn, a tram's rail tracks enabled them to carry far greater loads. Women tram conductors were employed for the first time in Glasgow during World War I, and the last horse-drawn tram ran in Morecambe in 1926. In the 1930s Britain's major cities started replacing trams with trolley or motor buses, and during the 1950s trams virtually disappeared. Then in the 1980s new light rail systems began to spring up, with cities like Nottingham and Manchester integrating them closely with other form of public transport. Who knows what the future will bring? 269pp, archive photos.