Towns that used to have more than one Tramway system

[778]

Have there been many towns in Britian that have had more than one tramway system (not including London). There are only 4 that I can think of.

Swansea - Swansea & Mumbles Tramway and Swansea Improvements & Tramway Company.
Llandudno - Great Orme Tramway and Llandudno & Colwyn Bay Electric Tramway.
Grimsby - Grimsby & Immingham Tramway and Great Grimsby Street Tramways.
Douglas - Manx Electric Railway & Douglas Bay Horse Tramway.

Quite surprising that towns as small as Douglas has and Llandudno used to have 2 tramway systems. Are there any others that I have missed?

 

[Lloyds siding]

Lots more. a quick look at Wikipedia indicates plenty...and I'm pretty sure that their list isn't comprehensive or correct.

Wikipedia list of towns with tramway systems

 

[Taunton]

Manchester used to have a whole range of tramcars running in from separate outlying towns. There were some streets, particularly to the west side of Deansgate, which were in Manchester and thus built to their style, but which only ever saw Salford tramcars, and you could thus travel on the Salford tram wholly within Manchester.

Douglas Isle of Man actually had four different tramways until 1930, one with double deckers, the Douglas Southern tramway, which lasted until WW2, and a cable-hauled tramway, San Francisco style, run by the town council, which ran up to the higher ground houses behind the centre.

 

[edwin_m]

Is the OP looking for physically separate tramways or trams of multiple operators running on the same track? Many municipalities ran their own tramways and often there would be agreements to run through into other municipalities, as with the Manchester example above but also Newcastle/Gateshead and many others. There were also private enterprise tramways using parts of municipal networks, such as the Notts and Derby which had its own tracks from Ripley to the edge of Nottingham but used City of Nottingham tracks to reach the centre.

Conversely, there were neighbouring municipalities that couldn't come to an agreement, or had some technical difference such as track gauge, so through passengers had to change vehicles at the boundary (which pretty much by definition was probably not where someone would want to change trams!). Since they were in different boroughs I'm not sure if they count for this thread.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

South Lancashire Tramways, a private company, co-existed with the municipal systems of Bolton, St. Helens, Wigan and Salford. It was partially replaced by trolleybuses from 1933 onwards.

 

[randyrippley]

A good place to start might be this website

British Tramway Uniforms Badges and Buttons

www.tramwaybadgesandbuttons.com

It's a site which details the uniforms of the various tram companies that worked in the UK.
The page I've linked to is the A-B section of the alphabetic list
Just on that page alone you have the following with multiple entries

Aberdeen
Accrington
Bath
Belfast
Birkenhead
Birmingham
Blackpool
Blackburn
Bolton
Bradford
Brighton
Burnley
Bury


In other words, quite a lot

 

[Taunton]

Conversely, there were neighbouring municipalities that couldn't come to an agreement, or had some technical difference such as track gauge, so through passengers had to change vehicles at the boundary (which pretty much by definition was probably not where someone would want to change trams!). Since they were in different boroughs I'm not sure if they count for this thread.

Manchester apparently had an issue with through trams to Oldham, where the vehicle and driver went through, but fares were only charged to the boundary, where conductors changed over for one of the opposite operator and everyone, staying in their seats, had to pay again for the rest of their journey.

 

[edwin_m]

A good place to start might be this website

British Tramway Uniforms Badges and Buttons

www.tramwaybadgesandbuttons.com

It's a site which details the uniforms of the various tram companies that worked in the UK.
The page I've linked to is the A-B section of the alphabetic list
Just on that page alone you have the following with multiple entries

Aberdeen
Accrington
Bath
Belfast
Birkenhead
Birmingham
Blackpool
Blackburn
Bolton
Bradford
Brighton
Burnley
Bury


In other words, quite a lot

Many of these will be where one operator took over from another one, rather than both running simultaneously. For example the entry for Bath Horse Tramways indicates it was "municipalised" as a precursor to electrification.

 

[D6130]

Portsmouth perhaps? The Portsdown & Horndean Light Railway - passing through Widley, Purbrook, Waterlooville and Cowplain - may have just touched the city boundary.

 

[Taunton]

Aberdeen
Accrington
Bath
Belfast
Birkenhead
Birmingham
Blackpool
Blackburn
Bolton
Bradford
Brighton
Burnley
Bury

A lot of these are just a transfer of operator, commonly at electrification, and in many cases from a commercial operator to the municipality. Putting rails down for horse service was one thing, but erecting standards and (generally both together) installing electric street lighting, let alone the power house allowing the first public electricity supply was really civic infrastructure. Quite often the initial commercial operator had a concession for say 15 years, and the process happened when this expired.

 

[John Luxton]

Douglas - Manx Electric Railway & Douglas Bay Horse Tramway.

Quite surprising that towns as small as Douglas has and Llandudno used to have 2 tramway systems. Are there any others that I have missed?

Douglas actually had four - The Douglas Head Marine Drive Tramway (closed 1939 though one car is preserved at Crich - it was the only example of standard gauge on the island. There was also the Upper Douglas Cable Tramway which was very similar to the San Francisco tramway. One of the pulley wheels and and interpretative display can be found on the right when leaving the Sea Terminal. it closed in 1929. Again one car preserved made up from the components of two cars. It has been modified for battery operation and has occasionally had outings on the horse tramway tracks.

 

[etr221]

I think quite a few towns had multiple tramway systems initially, as company built horse tramways, but electrification and municipalisation (after 21 years, under the 1870 Tramways Act - which deterred company investment) led to unification.

 

[david1212]

Blackpool.
The Blackpool Electric Tramway Company built the first section along the town centre seafront. When the lease expired Blackpool Corporation took over and expanded the system. The Blackpool and Fleetwood Tramroad running from Blackpool North station along Dickson Road to Gynn Square then North was initially totally separate. The corporation expansion included extended their system along the seafront to Gynn Square. The two system were then linked. In time Blackpool Corporation took over the Blackpool and Fleetwood Tramroad system.

 

[TheHovisKid]

Lancaster, the Corporation electric system from Dalton Square, and the horse drawn trams from Morecambe terminating at Stonewall.

 

[randyrippley]

Lancaster, the Corporation electric system from Dalton Square, and the horse drawn trams from Morecambe terminating at Stonewall.

Stonewell

 

[TheHovisKid]

Stonewell

Fat fingers.....

 

[Western 52]

Laxey on the Isle of Man still has two tramways- Manx Electric Railway and the Snaefell line. Are they tramways or railways though?!

 

[Bevan Price]

Prescot (Lancs.). Did not have its own system, but there was a head-on meeting of the Liverpool & St. Helens systems. Through running was possible, but they normally operated separately.

 

[Kingston Dan]

Does Edinburgh count? After horsedrawn trams were withdrawn Edinburgh had cable trams with Leith (and I think Musselburgh) having electric trams. Leith Borough merged with Edinburgh in 1920 (controversially) and the systems were merged.

 

[Roilshead]

Quite a number here in what is now West Yorkshire. Leeds had two: Leeds City Tramways, and Yorkshire (West Riding) Electric Tramways - which ran in from Wakefield and also shared the Leeds-Rothwell service with Leeds. Bradford enjoyed the services of both the Bradford Tramways & Omnibus Company and the Bradford & Shelf Tramways until they were both municipalised. Pudsey UDC was served by both Bradford City Tramways (Bradford-Pudsey) and Leeds City Tramways (Leeds-Pudsey), who for a number of years ran a through service using trams with axles which adjusted to accommodate the differing gauges encountered at the Pudsey boundary. Elland UDC was served by Huddersfield Corporation Tramways and Halifax Corporation Tramways. Shelf and Queensbury UDCs were both served by Halifax Corporation and Bradford City tramways. Dewsbury was served by both the Yorkshire (Woolen District) Electric Tramways and the Dewsbury, Ossett & Soothill Nether Electric Tramways, and I'm pretty sure that the the Yorkshire (West Riding) Electric Tramways also reached Ossett - so that includes Ossett UDC as well. Shipley UDC was served by both Bradford City Tramways and the Mid-Yorkshire Tramways, until the latter were taken over by the former.

I think that at Stockbridge (Bingley/Keighley) and Bailiffe Bridge (Brighouse/Hipperholme) the Bradford/Keighley and Halifax/Bradford cars met at either side of the boundary.

God alone knows what you'd find if looked into the greater Manchester or Black Country areas! - if you can only think of four then you haven't thought . . .

Whatever, these sites that have been referenced are full of errors/generalisations/sequential operations - they're a starting-point for further research, nothing more.

 

[Taunton]

Does Edinburgh count? After horsedrawn trams were withdrawn Edinburgh had cable trams with Leith (and I think Musselburgh) having electric trams. Leith Borough merged with Edinburgh in 1920 (controversially) and the systems were merged.

Edinburgh actually had two separate cable tram companies, the Edinburgh Northern system, with a powerhouse in Stockbridge, by the 1970s this was a police car garage, and the mainstream Edinburgh Tramways with a powerhouse where the main bus garage and works later was. They merged up later on.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Swansea - the world's oldest railway (1804) - aka the Mumbles Tram and of course a municipal system - the splendidly named "Swansea Improvement and Tramways Company" - though technically Swansea only became a city in 1969.....