There's a programme called The Golden Age of Trams on BBC4 at 9pm tomorrow (Monday, December 5). It might be worth a look for anyone interested in the Birkenhead connection with tram history, as I think it mentions George Francis Train, the founder of the Birkenhead street railway in 1860.
As a kid in the last days of the L'pool trams, you could go miles for a 1d return. Used to love the howl of the motors as it went up Brownlow Hill. There was a stop at the foot of the hill on Mt.Vernon (by the Lybro factory). If the rails were damp, the driver had a hell of a job with a loaded car to get away. As an impressionable young lad,I learnt a few naughty words from those drivers !!
I don't remember trams in Birkenhead, but as a kid in the Fifties I used to see them when my Dad took us over to Liverpool on the ferry. I seem to recall them going under the old overhead railway. However, I'm sure we called them trolley buses, not trams. Were trams and trolley buses two different vehicles?
Yes, different. Both trams and trolley buses picked up current from overhead wires, but trams ran on tracks while trolley buses didn't. I don't think Liverpool ever had trolley buses. Trolley buses had twin overhead wires, for supply and return current. Trams only needed one, as the track was used as the return.
Thanks chriskay and bert1 for the info and pictures on trams / trolleybuses. I never knew there was a difference - I thought it was just an alternative name.
I can see now that the obvious advantage with a trolleybus was that you didn't have to lay tramlines.
A lot of undertakings changed to trolleybuses after scrapping the trams. They already had existing power supplies, feeders, substations etc. All that was required was to erect an additional wire for the negative return instead of the rails. Trolleybuses of course were much more flexible than trams and could overtake slower traffic and avoid obstructions. They had tremendous acceleration too. Could bat up hills as if they didn't exist. Could draw (almost) limitless amounts of current to keep the speed up.
Liverpool and Birkenhead just went straight over to motor buses. Petrol and fuel oil was dirt cheap then! A lot of tramways suffered from lack of maintenance thanks to the war. Cheaper to buy shiny new comfy buses !
If anyone wants to read more about the inimitable George Francis Train – featured on Monday’s BBC4 trams documentary – there’s an interesting biography called Around the World With Citizen Train, by Allen Foster (available on Amazon).
There is also a reprint of a small book with the snappy title of The First Street Railway Banquet in the Old World, Birkenhead, 1860: A Report of the Banquet Given by George Francis Train, of Boston, USA, to Inaugurate the Opening of the First Street Railway in Europe, at Birkenhead, August 30, 1860, with Opinions of the Press on the Subject of Street Railways / Report by Lee and Nightingale.
I’ve got a copy of this somewhere, but can’t remember where I bought it. However, it doesn’t seem to be readily available from Amazon or elsewhere these days.
Train invited 1,200 of the great and the good to his super-luncheon (I think it was held in a warehouse on Birkenhead docks), including peers, MPs, most of the crowned heads of Europe, and the Pope. About 350 people turned up for the meal, but not the Pope.
