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.

Look forward to watching it. Thanks for the heads up.

Thanks yoller. A quick look at the blurb for BBC4 shows Wirral Tramway Museum and Liverpool trams in service. Should be interesting.

A little taster for you Pinz

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00m7qkn

Bliss ! Thanks Bert.

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.

Google Images

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 !

Brilliant programme. Really enjoyed it.

I finally realised why my mum always called the lower deck of a bus "inside". It's because the upper deck of a tram was uncovered.

Yes, I remember it being either "inside" or "on top" even when the open top trams had long gone.

There must have been no smoking inside on a tram, a tradition carried on to 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.

The Banquet was held in the workshop of Robert Main, the coachbuilder who assembled the trams, which had been shipped over from America. This was located at the junction of Canning Street and Argyle Street, roughly where the entrance to Wirral Archives is now (at that time Argyle Street carried on down to Shore Road across what is now the car park for the Cheshire Lines Building).

Here are the first few pages of George Francis Train's booklet published to mark the inauguration of his Birkenhead Street Railway in 1860.

Birkenhead may have let the American entrepreneur build his dream project, but the booklet is not very complimentary about the town's inhabitants!

He took a chance on the commissioners liking it, he must have had a great deal of confidence in his project.

If anyone wants to watch it again on i player, its only on for another 20 hours from this posting.