The Golden Age of Trams: A Streetcar Named Desire Timeshift

ALAN BENNETT: 'There was a point during the Second World War

'when my father took up the double bass.

'To recall the trams of my boyhood is to be reminded

'particularly of that time.'

Trams were so evocative of Alan Bennett's childhood,

that he's recorded his warmth and affection for them

in a short story called Leeds Trams.

'We live over the shop, so I sleep and wake to the sound of the trams.

'The trams getting up speed for the hill before Weetwood Lane,

'trams spinning down from West Park,

'trams shunted around in the sheds in the middle of the night.

'The scraping of wheels, the clanging of the bell.'

For a century, from the 1860s to 1960,

trams were a familiar feature of Britain's roads.

They opened up new places to live,

new possibilities for work and opportunities for leisure.

And they became synonymous with seaside holidays.

For many, they were also a wonderful and comforting part of their childhoods.

They are so typical of the age from which they came.

When I think about them, I think about good times in my boyhood.

And I suspect a lot of other people think the same.

Oh, this takes me back to when I was definitely a Diddy Man.

When I was a Diddy Man, we used to travel everywhere, my brother and sister, my father and mother,

we used to travel - everybody did - by tram.

They clank, don't they? Clonk, clonk. Clonk, clonk.

And it's a lovely noise. And then they go round a corner and scream,

and you get this business on a point, and everybody sort of goes from one side to the other.

There's nothing else on the roads like a tram car.

'It's not just the passage of time that makes me invest the trams of those days with such pleasure.

'To be on a tram, sailing down Headingley Lane on a fine evening,

'lifted the heart at the time just as it does in memory.'

200 years ago, the only form of passenger transport was horsepower.

But it wasn't a smooth ride.

In the days of unmade, uneven roads,

a horse bus was a far from comfortable experience.

The horse buses often had a problem

actually going down some of the roads because of the potholes,

because of the mud.

You would need sometimes four to six horses to pull a horse bus,

which didn't actually carry that many people.

The clue to the way forward

lay in a system of rails and horsepower, first used to move

limestone between Swansea and the Mumbles.

If you were to lay a rail down -

which was the original idea with tramways,

that you would lay a hard surface in a soft road -

you could actually use fewer horses and carry more people.

This same technology was adapted to carry tourists

on horse-drawn carriages.

The system was ingenious,

and the world's first tramway opened in South Wales in 1807.

But with Welsh modesty, it went almost unnoticed.

It took a bold and brash American,

the appropriately named George Francis Train,

to get the whole of Britain on the right tracks.

He's what we might call a transport mogul now -

he built a railway across America, a shipping line to Australia...

He's the person that Jules Verne based his character Phileas Fogg on,

Around The World In 80 Days.

Train had witnessed various forms of tramway being tried

and tested in the US, from the 1830s onwards.

While working for a shipping company in Liverpool,

he crossed the Mersey to neighbouring Birkenhead.

It was here that Train did his bit for Britain.

He launched the first horse-drawn regular tramway service,

setting in motion the beginnings of an urban public transport network,

and the birth of the commuter.

And Train never did anything in a low-key way.

Well, we're on the site of the inaugural picture, in 1860,

when George Francis Train recorded this event,

and all the people carefully posed, packing the tram.

One of the persons is pointing outwards up the street there.

That's George Francis Train himself.

Next, Train headed for London, where things didn't run so smoothly.

His early tramways ran on raised rails -

not a problem in semi-rural Birkenhead, but in the capital,

chock-a-block with horse-drawn carriages, it was a nightmare.

He was arrested in 1861,

after his raised rails caused chaos to other traffic.

'The enquiry into the summons taken out against Mr Train

'for breaking and injuring a certain road,

'called Uxbridge Road, was resumed yesterday...

'Thomas Clark, a cab proprietor of Mile End,

'said he drove over the tramway in his own horse and cab,

'and it caused his horse to fall down.

'He had a fare going to Hyde Park.

'When asked, "Where was your horse when it fell?"

'he replied, "On his backside."'

The problem was overcome by dropping the rails to the level of the street,

and by 1870 Train's tram was back in business.

Other towns and cities began following his lead,

and horse-drawn tramways started to be seen

on high streets and promenades.

These trams were posh. They were little front parlours on wheels.

The original horse trams were sumptuous.

Utrecht velvet is on the specification,

and beautiful wood - you can see the tram we're in,

there's lovely figured oak, and bird's eye maple.

Three and eightpence a foot that cost, by the way.

Early trams had a complex way of turning round

at the end of the line.

Being long and cumbersome, this clogged up the middle

of the busy, bustling urban centres.

Dual-ended trams that didn't need to turn around

eventually solved the problem, and were quickly pressed into service.

They were lightweight construction,

so they could travel a bit faster than horse buses.

And they had a number of interesting features -

they had bells to alert the driver when to stop,

they had uniformed staff, strap hanging -

we can see in the tram that we're in now, some straps -

efficient braking, and features that we would really call modern,

to make this modern streetcar.

# Won't you ride in my little red wagon?

# I'd love to pull you down the street

# I'll bet all the kids will be jealous

# When they see my playmate so sweet... #

At first, it was only the well-to-do who could afford

the threepenny fare.

The open top deck was the place to see from and be seen in,

as the ladies and gentlemen of Victorian Britain

looked down on the riff-raff below.

It would be many years before tram travel would be available to all.

Especially to those who lived and worked

in the teeming towns and cities of mid 19th-century Britain.

Overcrowding was particularly hard on the poorest, in slums,

which heaved under the stench of filth and vermin.

Sickness was rife. For them, there was no way out.

The working poor hardly moved from area to area at all.

All they could do was walk.

There was no real capacity for walking or incentive to walk -

there was nowhere to go except the local public house -

so people remained very, very set in their own locations.

Pressure would only start to be relieved by the exodus

of the middle classes, who were first to escape.

They began moving to new houses on the outskirts of towns.

To serve THEIR transport needs, a city-wide,

integrated transport system was needed, and it would take

a young Bristolian, George White, to help make that happen.

My great-grandfather, Sir George White, was a self-made man.

He was the son of a painter and decorator and a lady's maid,

and he was born in Bristol in 1854.

George White was one of the most influential figures in Britain's tram history.

He left school at 14,

joined a local law firm as a lowly office clerk,

and learnt all he could by reading the law library.

In 1874, his firm took over the reins of the fledgling Bristol Tramway Company,

and White, still only 20, was made company secretary.

He teamed up with James Clifton Robinson, who had been

George Francis Train's office boy back in Birkenhead,

and who had squeezed onto that first British tram ride

some 14 years earlier.

It was really James Clifton Robinson who provided the engineering skills,

and George White who provided the inspiration,

the direction and the finance.

And between them, they changed the face of tramways in Great Britain.

In Bristol, they would show how a tram system could transform

a city and the lives of its residents.

It would become a model copied throughout the country.

One of the things that trams did in the big cities

was to allow the suburbs to be built.

It made it possible to join neighbouring villages.

By running the trams out in the direction of these villages,

building followed - building of houses in particular.

And it was in this way that those living in the cramped inner cities

were able to move out to the suburbs.

Trams played an important part in the physical expansion of towns

and cities, which finally had room to breathe.

The trams were first introduced to relieve this massive overcrowding

in the centre of towns and cities.

But it was the middle and upper classes who took advantage of them,

because they were the people who could actually afford to buy the houses on the outskirts of town

and could afford to actually ride backwards and forwards on the tram.

By the 1880s, trams were becoming increasingly popular,

and new routes were springing up.

Lifelong tram enthusiast Peter Davey

has his own bijou museum in his up and over garage.

It's filled with artefacts

charting Bristol trams over the years,

and includes route signs for many of the local districts.

These are the boards that go along on the side of the tram

so you know what route you're on,

and the lovely gold hands

on the end.

I've got quite a good set here. Dad bought these, a penny each,

when they were scrapping the trams.

They've all got two routes - this is Westbury and Tramway Centre,

and of course on the other side you've got Zetland Road to Old Market.

So that could be used on any two routes, but a different colour.

For Alan Bennett, there is a greater significance in the link

between suburbs and route numbers.

'The route numbers had a certain mystique -

'the even numbers slightly superior to the odd,

'which tended to belong to trams going to Gipton, Harehills or Belle Isle,

'parts of Leeds where I'd never ventured.

'And Kirkstall will always be 4 - just as Lawnswood is 1.

'Odd details about trams come back to me now,

'like the slatted platforms, brown with dust,

'that were slung underneath either end like some urban cowcatcher.

'And how convivial trams were - the seats reversible,

'so that if you chose you could make up a four whenever you wanted.'

If we look over here, I've got one of the seats on the top deck.

Top deck seats, they were all open-top decks in Bristol.

Trams do this all day - they don't turn round at the end -

so when you get to the terminus you've got to change the seat

so now they're ready to go back the other way.

But Bristol had a rather clever thing. Imagine this on a wet day.

You get up the stairs, and you see all this and it's all wet.

Are you going to sit on it? No, but look.

We have a flap here, and you pick it up,

and there's a dry bit of wood that's coming up,

and you can sit on that quite happily,

and when you get off, it goes back,

all by itself.

As new tram routes emerged,

the number of horse trams on Britain's streets

multiplied at a galloping pace.

And more horse trams meant more horses.

Horses and other animals became almost as common

on the streets as people.

And the smell in the cities often resembled a farmyard.

The horse deposits 30 pounds of poo per day.

It also wees out two gallons of urine.

In Liverpool they had 400 horse trams, and for every tram,

they had 14 horses.

You can just imagine the vast piles of poo, basically,

that built up in towns and cities.

And there have been some academic papers written which directly linked

the horrible conditions and the amount of dung on the road

to infant mortality in inner cities, and so it was a massive problem.

It wasn't just a poo problem. Horses were expensive.

For every three horses pulling a tram,

another nine had to be fed and stabled,

as they were used in shifts.

Tram technology needed a more efficient source of power.

Steam was the next choice.

Steam-powered ships and locomotives

were commonplace in Victorian Britain,

with over 10,000 miles of rail track running between major cities.

But when steam-run trams huffed and puffed into the urban centres,

they caused a lot of hot air.

People believed that if they're running through the streets,

they were terrified of the noise, they didn't like the fire,

they really did blow up,

they'd frighten horses, and they'd kill people.

The public didn't like it very much, because they all got on white

and they all got off black, and it wasn't the best of moments!

Steam had its uses in Britain.

But steam trams never took off.

Richard Tangye, who made steam engines, actually said,

"Thus was the trade in quick-speed locomotives

"strangled in its cradle,"

which is a marvellous turn of phrase.

But a new power was available, electricity.

Electricity was a phenomenon that few people had experience of

and even less understood.

At the start of 1881,

the first electricity generator was installed in Britain.

Within just four years,

the first electrically-powered trams would be running.

But, as with horse and steam power before,

the transition to electric trams wasn't going to be problem-free.

The introduction of electric power

coincided with the explosion in another industry - tourism.

It was time to pack a bucket and spade and head for the seaside.

And it was in Blackpool that the first electric street tram

was launched in Britain.

She proudly paraded along the prom, lauded like a royal visitor.

But unlike passing dignitaries, she was here to stay.

The tramway was actually first opened on 29th September 1885,

and we'd always looked at trams a long time before that,

because Blackpool Council wanted one,

but they didn't want to do something old-fashioned.

They looked at horse trams, they looked at steam trams and thought,

"We don't want anything noisy or smelly,

"we want something clean and fresh."

From that point on, trams were as much a part of Blackpool

as Kiss Me Quick hats and seaside donkeys.

By the turn of the century,

Blackpool had become Britain's busiest resort,

attracting more than 2 million holidaymakers a year.

For thousands of factory workers from the north,

there was the annual trek to the town.

They worked hard for 51 weeks a year,

and for their single week's holiday, their wakes week,

they wanted to be treated.

A ride on a tram was far removed from the humdrum of daily life,

and it was a taste of things to come.

They were beautifully done. The leather seats would be upholstered.

For working people, it was all part of their holiday,

their wakes week or their day by the seaside,

and of course often they'd be decorated. Blackpool, really,

a lot of the prosperity of Blackpool all seems to me

to rely on the trams, the trams going

up and down the prom to look at the illuminations.

Mill workers, and not only mill workers, but many other people

going to Blackpool who wanted to do all the spectacular things,

"Noted for fresh air and fun,"

wear the comic hats and eat the stick of rock.

Being on a tram, they were an ideal vehicle for doing just that.

But it wasn't all plain sailing.

Blackpool's trams were initially powered

by an underground conduit system,

which meant the electricity was run through channels

under the road surface.

This quickly became an issue.

Because the line was directly on the seafront road,

and basically married up with the beach, every time the tide came in

it flooded, and seawater is a wonderful conductor of electricity,

and it used to blow all the trips in the substation,

everything would come to a halt,

and similarly on dry days when the wind blew,

the sand came off the beach and filled the slot up.

So we had to hire horses to pull the trams.

Sparks flew as transport engineers researched and experimented

to find the most workable system of running power to the trams.

One imaginative solution was found in the Midlands.

This is a surface contact stud,

and this system was used in Wolverhampton,

and what happened was there was a large magnetic skid under the tram,

which would be in contact with two of these studs at any one time,

so you wouldn't get a surge of electricity

each time you went over a stud.

And the magnet would draw up the contact inside the stud,

and so the surface of the stud would then become live.

When the magnet passed away,

the contact would drop down and then in theory the stud would be dead.

Now, we know that in Lincoln there was a different method

of surface contact used to this one,

but in Lincoln we know that horses were killed,

and we also know that street urchins with bare feet were paid

in order to put their foot on this

just to test whether the thing was alive or dead.

Apart from the danger to street urchins,

this wasn't the long-term answer.

One after another, transport chiefs all came to the same conclusion.

Overhead cables.

Electricity would be supplied by wires suspended above the road

through a swinging arm to the motor of the tram car,

then back via the wheels to the rails

with no risk of electrical shock to pedestrians.

At last there was a technology which was safe and reliable.

But still there were hurdles to overcome.

On the whole, householders reckoned that it would

increase the value of their houses,

and shopkeepers certainly felt that it would increase their trade.

But of course there were those who thought they were ugly, noisy

and disagreeable, and they certainly didn't want them in their district.

The public liked the convenience of tram travel,

but didn't like the disruption that came with it.

Sites had to be cleared, roads dug up.

Every time a new scheme was proposed,

there were huge debates in pubs and Parliament.

People wanted them, but not crossing THEIR backyards.

Even if you don't mind the noise and dirt and dust of trams,

actually laying the lines

is a very expensive and a very inconvenient business.

Other forms of transport just run on the ordinary road.

Trams have to have roads of their own,

and the simple process of laying those means the town

is disrupted or streets are disrupted wherever it happens.

George White and James Clifton Robinson in Bristol

spearheaded the push to get electrified trams established

in early 20th-century Britain.

In order to persuade the locals,

they published newspapers in every parish and district

where the trams were going to run.

They supported pro-tramway councillors,

they campaigned at elections, and of course to achieve all this

they also had to straighten streets, widen them,

rebuild them, strengthen bridges.

That set off a second sort of tramway bonanza.

As White and Robinson extended their empire all over Britain,

new corporations and entrepreneurs also saw transport

as a way to capitalise on this spirit of inventiveness.

Britain really was a fairly entrepreneurial society.

This was the time of people investing in the new Britain,

making money by developing things that a growing population

with slightly higher wages and urban living patterns wanted and needed.

There were electric trams coming in, the motor cars coming in,

people sometimes saw an aeroplane flying in the sky.

This is the technological beginnings of new Britain.

More and more people took to trams,

and they started to become the recognised system of mass transit.

In just four years from 1900,

102 tramway systems were introduced in towns and cities around Britain.

The opening day was regarded as a day en fete.

In London, the Prince of Wales presided over

an extension of the tram system by standing with his hand on the lever.

It was said in the newspapers he didn't drive the tram -

he wouldn't have condescended to drive it -

but he stood there with his hand on the lever while he was photographed.

The tram company produced penny tickets,

which were called the Prince of Wales tickets, for the inaugural day,

with the Prince of Wales' feathers on the ticket.

Trams became fashionable.

Trams became things which were desired

by all the citizens throughout Britain.

The British loved their new trams,

not least because they provided ideal vantage points

for any public event.

This is a very typical British tram of the era.

You can see on the backs of the steps, they have this pattern.

There's absolutely no need for that sort of thing,

it was just the pride in the vehicle and the corporate and civic pride,

because it must have taken quite a lot of time

and quite a lot of money to actually decorate the vehicle in this way.

And you find that all over the vehicle as well.

There's a coat of arms etched into the glass of the door,

there's the gold leaf painted along the side panels

and the coat of arms on the side of the tram.

A lot of, basically,

unnecessary embellishment just for the sheer joy and civic pride of it.

For the working man, something major had changed - the price.

As fares were slashed,

trams became the transport of the working classes.

The penny ticket on the horse-run tram became a penny for travelling

two or three miles longer than had been the case when it was the horse.

And because these journeys were cheaper,

the journey became more frequent.

In Manchester, in the days of the horse-drawn tram,

the average working man made about 50 journeys a year.

Once electric trams came in, half the cost,

he made 150 journeys a year.

It just made it possible because it was cheap.

Tram cars started to be held dear to the hearts of those

who relied on them every day.

In 1905, musical star of the day George Lashwood

even sang about them.

# Then we'd go, go

# Go for a ride on the car, car, car

# For we know how cosy the top of the tram cars are

# And the steam car's so small and there's not much to pay

# You sit close together and fool all the way

# Maybe a Miss will be Mrs some day

# Through riding on top of the car! #

On a sunny day, there was no better place to be

than riding on the top deck of a tram car.

In the wind and rain it wasn't so much fun,

but at least the passengers could huddle inside.

There was no such comfort for the driver, however.

The poor old driver would stand here in all weathers,

and there's no protection at all from the weather.

He'd very often have big leather gauntlets

so that he possibly wouldn't get frostbite.

And he'd have a big overcoat.

But it was a pretty grim way of earning a living.

If you can imagine, you're stood up all day throughout the winter,

come rain, snow, and just standing driving here for hour after hour.

Other more user-friendly models managed to give the driver

at least a little shelter.

But space was at a premium, as tram companies wanted to make money,

and that meant getting bottoms on seats.

Various designs of stairways were tried,

to leave as much space as possible for seating,

though the best solution created problems of its own.

The staircase spirals down this way

and takes up less space than the one which would spiral the other way.

But the big disadvantage with this is that you can't see,

if you're a driver, over this shoulder.

So a pierced step was put in so that you could see through and ensure

that nothing was coming past the vehicle on the left-hand side.

Now, that's fine, but a tram is the same at both ends

and doesn't turn around, so the conductor,

on the return journey, would have to stand on this platform.

The pierced step would then mean

he could catch a glimpse of a lady's ankle.

So...

there's this to protect the modesty of the ladies - the decency flap.

If the conductor didn't have that down

when a lady was going up the stairs,

he could probably be dismissed if the inspector saw him.

Yet times were changing,

and attitudes were about to be challenged.

During the First World War, five million men were conscripted

or volunteered to fight in the trenches.

And almost overnight, the role of women changed.

Women were needed everywhere to keep Britain running,

including on the trams.

The female tram conductor, or conductress,

a clippie, as she was called in London, was regarded

with some doubt and disquiet at the beginning of the First World War.

It was thought rather inappropriate that ladies,

or women who aspired to be ladies,

should climb the stairs, should shout out

"Any more fares, please? No more room inside. Pass right down the car."

This wasn't the sort of thing the female sex should do.

At the start of the First World War,

there were something like 18,000 women

employed in various forms of transport across the country.

By the end of the First World War, it was something like 117,000.

So it had increased hugely.

When the war ended, men came back from the trenches

and wanted to return to their jobs.

They wanted their jobs back on the trams.

But of course, the girls were rather fond of their freedom

once they'd started to work,

and there were one or two nasty moments, evidently.

Feelings ran so high that in a number of cities

such as Bristol and Manchester, hostilities escalated into riots.

The men said, "They're pushing us out. We have families to keep.

"They should be at home looking after the children while we earn the money.

"And they undercut us."

It was an argument that spread not just in transport,

but in many industries,

and continued throughout the slow demob process.

There was a very concerted government campaign,

largely to do with the morale of men and also for economic reasons,

to get women out of the workplace. And sometimes,

even for jobs that hadn't existed before the First World War,

women were dismissed from them.

For the tram passenger, at least, there was some constancy.

From 1918 for the next 20 years,

trams continued to be the transport of the people.

They began to have a more uniform look.

The open balcony backs and fronts were now enclosed

so people could be packed on board, whatever the weather.

They were solid, reliable and dependable in a changing world,

which included a depression and another war on the horizon.

The face of Britain was being modernised

and the tram was witness to it all.

The continuity provided by trams during this period helped

cement them into the hearts of many.

Trams were part of the photograph album of numerous childhoods.

Comedian Ken Dodd was born in the 1920s,

and trams were a part of his everyday life.

Oh, this takes me back to when I was definitely a Diddy Man.

When I was a Diddy Man, we used to travel everywhere,

my brother, sister, father and mother - everybody went by tram.

He's been tickling audiences for more than 60 years.

Tonight, ladies and gentlemen,

I feel absolutely tattyfleurious and full of plumptiousness.

It makes me absolutely discomnicorated

to see that so many of you have turned up for the free soup.

"Move along the car, please. Right down the car, please. Thank you."

Not surprisingly, he sees the funny side of trams.

A little old lady said to the driver,

"Will I get a shock if I put my leg on the tram line?"

He said "You will if you put your other leg on the overhead wires."

As a child in the 1930s,

Ken would travel with his family from his home in Knotty Ash

to see friends and relations in various districts of Liverpool.

This particular tram, the number 40,

has a very special place in my heart, because when we were kids,

we travelled to the Pier Head or into the city on the 10B or the 10C.

But one day, they said, "We're going to put a tram track

"and run trams past your house in Knotty Ash." Whoopee!

And they did, the number 40. It was like when they went to the moon.

It opened up a new universe for us,

because from Knotty Ash,

you could go to foreign parts like Garston, Bootle.

We could even come to Birkenhead, yes.

It was very reasonable. Adults paid tuppence or threepence.

But when you were a small boy,

you could get away with a scholar's. A scholar's was a penny.

So needless to say, we were scholars until quite a ripe old age.

For Ken and other comedians,

tram travel was always a source for their material.

At the back, there was the conductor. He was the comedian.

That's where Arthur Askey got his catchphrase "Ay-thank-yew".

With his little ticket machine, taking the money. "Ay-thank-yew."

"Right along the car, please." He had a joke for everybody.

"Does this tram stop at the Pier Head?"

He said "If it doesn't, madam, there'll be a hell of a splash."

When Ken Dodd was 14, he became interested in show business

and started performing at local community halls

with a ventriloquist's dummy.

His career gradually grew, and it was the tram that allowed him

to spread his theatrical wings,

performing in Merseyside clubs and theatres

and linking through to other transport,

which opened up the country to him.

We used to get the tram down to the Pier Head,

come across on the ferry.

Here, you'd pick up a bus

and take it - oh, miles away, to Ellesmere Port.

That was my first job, Ellesmere Port.

And then you might even travel to Wales.

AIR RAID SIREN WAILS

Ken launched his amateur career

at the outbreak of the Second World War.

It was a time when people needed something to laugh about.

It was also a time when the trams helped keep Britain running

and became etched in the memories of many, including Alan Bennett.

War might have been going on around him,

but for a small boy, trams had just as big an impact on his daily life.

"Daddy's a smoker, so we troop upstairs, rather than going inside,

"the word a reminder of the time when upstairs was also outside.

"On some trams in 1942, it still is,

"because in these early years of the war,

"a few open-ended trams have been brought back into service.

"We wedge ourselves in the front corner,

"to be exposed to the wind and weather an unexpected treat,

"and also an antidote to the travel sickness

"from which my brother and I suffer,

"though I realise now that this must have been due

"as much to all the smoking that went on

"as to the motion of the tram itself.

"I went to school by tram,

"the fare a ha'penny from St Chad's to the ring road.

"A group of us at the modern schools scorned school dinners

"and came home for lunch,

"catching the tram from another terminus at West Park."

For Roy Hattersley, born in 1932,

thoughts of trams take him back to his wartime boyhood in Yorkshire.

There was a great movement at 7.30 in the morning

of boys and girls going to different schools.

And what we all wanted to do is sit in the bay,

which was a circular set of seats

in which eight or ten people could sit.

So there was a great scramble in the morning to get upstairs

and get into the bay.

These were rather efficient, smooth looking vehicles.

They were flat-topped.

They were in the civic colours of cream and navy blue,

and they looked really rather smart.

They also had this sort of galleon capacity,

because they almost floated along.

They didn't make the same sort of noise that motor cars made.

They made a clanging noise which was somehow detached from their movement.

So you felt that they had certain ethereal qualities as they came past.

While some areas like Hattersley's Sheffield brought in more modern,

stream-lined trams, other places, like Bristol,

hardly changed their fleet at all,

and that was part of their appeal.

Peter Davey inherited his life-long passion for trams from his father.

When they spotted a new tram,

the design was the same as it had been nearly 40 years earlier.

He used to say, "Come on, my boy, there's a new tram around.

"Do you want to come with me?" So I would go.

One or two made a different noise and he'd say,

"Quite right, because that was made by a different company to that one.

"It was an experimental one", and things like this.

So then I got interested,

and I used to write the numbers down.

Bristol was unusual in that its tramcars remained open-topped -

a standardised fleet, unaltered from its original 1900 design.

Peter has a collection of the city's tram memorabilia

in his personal garage museum.

Actually, these are very rare,

but these are Bristol's tram tickets.

You've got a child ticket and a penny,

and you've got another child ticket

and there's a tuppenny ha'penny one there.

There's a threepenny one,

and then you've got the workmen's return with the red stripe.

That meant that when you got on the tram,

you would see this sign hanging above the driver's head.

Why doesn't it open when you want it to? Over the driver's head.

And the tram would come down the road

and you'd say, "Oh, there's a workmen's car.

"That means I can go back with the same ticket,

"because they will issue me one with a red stripe."

So you put it in your pocket and kept it.

On the other hand, if he didn't like the look of you,

he could turn it over, couldn't he?

Yes, here, you've got the punch.

The punch won't work without a ticket in it.

So you have to put a ticket in it. And then, there we go.

But there's a hole here now.

There isn't a ticket here, as far as the punch is concerned,

so it won't punch it.

So it's one punch per ticket.

I rather like this, a lovely enamel sign.

These signs would be on the top deck of the tram cars, you see?

And it says,

"Passengers should remain seated

"when the car is passing under railway bridges."

I think that's rather good, don't you?

Don't you think most people would do that anyhow? Perhaps not.

"..And are warned it is dangerous to touch the overhead electric wires."

Trams were tall, thin vehicles,

often squashed full with up to 70 people.

With no other method of transporting possessions during these war years,

the trams' limitations started to be seen.

For much of the summer,

I was accompanied by a very large cricket bag,

because I was playing cricket every evening and playing all the time.

Therefore, there was a problem about what to do with the cricket bag.

You put it under the stairs, but this in itself provided a dilemma.

Did you then go upstairs, which you wanted to do,

which meant leaving my cricket bag under the stairs and risking it being pinched?

Roy Hattersley needn't have worried. His cricket bag stayed safe.

But he wasn't the only one with bulky luggage issues.

In Alan Bennett's Leeds Trams short story, he recalls a time

when a musical instrument wasn't welcomed on the tram.

"Around 1942, we come into the double bass period,

"when some of our tram journeys become fraught with embarrassment.

"The niche that protects the conductor from the passengers

"is also just about big enough to protect the double bass.

"But when Dad suggests this,

"there's invariably an argument which he never wins,

"the clincher generally coming when the conductor points out

"that, strictly speaking, that thing isn't allowed on the tram at all.

"So while we sit inside and pretend he isn't with us,

"Dad stands on the platform grasping the bass by the neck

"as if he's about to give a solo.

"He gets in the way of the conductor,

"he gets in the way of people getting on and off,

"and, always a mild man,

"it must have been more embarrassing for him than it ever is for us."

There were more pressing troubles preoccupying Britain.

The war still had no end in sight.

Everyone had to be prepared, and even trams were used for training.

In this film from 1944,

Home Guard troops practised how they would tackle

an incendiary hit on a tram.

As bombs rained down at night, trams kept running through the streets,

their rigid routes enabling them to travel in darkness -

but not without danger.

During the war, trams were a very popular form of transport,

but they also could be a lethal one,

because with the blackout, you often couldn't see a tram coming.

They were known as the silent killers,

because at least if a lorry or a horse and cart or something came,

people got warning of it.

And in the first six months of the war,

the death rate of pedestrians doubled.

It was 100% more than it had been in 1938,

and trams were some of the culprits of this rise.

Yet trams played a vital role during the war,

far exceeding their danger.

Some even went beyond the call.

Tram enthusiast Richard Wiseman is visiting the actual tram

that saved his life during the Blitz.

Way back when the doodlebugs and the V2s were falling into London,

I was stationed there in the Royal Navy.

Any spare time, I used to ride around on the trams.

And I was on a tram going towards Kennington

when I saw a number 1 coming in the opposite direction.

I'd been looking out for a number 1 for goodness knows how long,

because they didn't run very often.

And so I got off the tram I was on, hoping to catch this.

Unfortunately, I didn't catch number 1,

but the tram I got off

was blown up about five or ten minutes after I got off it.

-So number 1 is very important.

-Let's give it a stroke!

-Give it a hug.

There you are.

Trams have always been an integral part of Mr Wiseman's life.

He even worked on them in Glasgow while a student.

Your life varied immensely and was full of good humour.

The very early tram was about half past five in the morning.

Your only passengers would be postmen going up into the city.

If there was a football match at the Celtic ground,

you would speed up to try and get past it before the crowds came out.

-Ooh! Naughty boy!

-So you took your chances on that sort of thing.

The only difficult times, possibly, would be late at night,

when one or two inebriated Glaswegians would get on

and you had to cope with them.

On one occasion, we got to Mosspark terminus

and the gentleman was completely flat out,

so we took him off the tram, laid him on a seat.

He wasn't there the next morning, so presumably he got back home again.

Glasgow, of course, was the greatest system, probably, in my opinion.

Richard Wiseman's a bit of an old romantic.

He proposed to his wife, Anne,

within a month of meeting her 55 years ago.

But she's the first to admit there's always been a third presence

in their marriage - the tram,

and she's had to share his affections.

When they went to Scotland for their honeymoon,

it wasn't just for the scenery.

I thought it was strange we were going to stay in Glasgow overnight.

It's not the first place you think of when you think of a honeymoon.

As soon as you get into Glasgow, you were aware of the trams.

They were everywhere! A huge system. And he was in dreamland.

And so we spent the day going round Glasgow.

And he was very naughty - he asked me to go to this dreadful terminus,

and then we hopped on another one.

Can you imagine? We just went round the tramway places!

-It was pouring with rain, wasn't it?

-Was it? I can't remember.

I was too busy looking at you!

And the tram, of course.

Charmer(!)

By the end of the war,

trams and tramways had been left battle-scarred.

Bombs aimed at Britain's city centres

had torn many rails apart, closing lines and destroying depots.

It made economic sense to dig the tracks up

rather than to replace them.

Even those trams which had survived

were now seen as outmoded

and not conducive to the "brave new world"

that was being planned for the future.

Towns were changing.

What was happening is the sort of ribbon development

and the growth of the suburbs,

which extended far into the countryside,

not only in London

but in Manchester and Bristol and Leeds and all these places,

and of course the trams weren't so good for such long distances.

So you've got the great growth of the suburban railways

and in places like London and Glasgow

you've got the extension of the underground.

So even though trams were very popular with the people,

they weren't necessarily quite so popular with the planners.

Buses were available, and they could be much more flexible,

when you think about it.

If they had to close a road, a bus can go round, whereas a tram can't.

Motorcars were coming in,

and people were getting their own selfish ways of transport.

These spanking, shiny buses and cars were now overtaking trams.

They heralded the start of a large vehicle manufacturing industry

which would employ thousands in Britain.

And they were symbols of a new prosperity,

and with it new social status.

HOOTER BLARES

ROY HATTERSLEY: Trams were what the working classes travelled in.

As we became middle class, people began to turn

instinctively, perhaps subconsciously,

against what seemed to them to be a working-class phenomenon.

Roy Hattersley has long been an observer

of the landscape of social class.

He wears his own humble Sheffield roots with pride.

While he and fellow journalist Keith Waterhouse were both columnists for Punch,

Waterhouse gave them each their own northern, working-class emblems.

Keith said, "Let's come to an agreement.

"You can have trams and I'll have cloth caps."

And this was because he was implying, I think quite rightly,

that the tram, like the cloth cap, is resonant in people's minds

of industrial north of England.

The late author never lost his affections

for the working-class transport of his boyhood

and fulfilled an ambition when he got to drive one.

-So, this one forward?

-Yeah, at the same time.

-Do I have to press it down?

-No, just pull it towards you.

I can do that, can't I?

-HORN TOOTS

-You can do that.

-I can do that.

Toad of Toad Hall!

-Right, that way.

-And one, and two,

-and three, and four.

-Four. And...

HORN TOOTS

-That's it.

-HORN TOOTS

New double-decker buses were modelled on trams

and began replacing them almost by stealth.

Over the years, trams had become more utilitarian and less plush.

But the new buses were cushioned

to compensate for the harder, non-rail ride.

They seemed luxurious by comparison.

"Buses have never inspired the same affection,

"too comfortable and cushioned to have a moral dimension.

"Trams were bare and bony, transport reduced to its basic elements,

"and they had a song to sing, which buses never did.

"I was away at university when they started to phase them out -

"Leeds, as always, in too much of a hurry to get to the future

"and so doing the wrong thing.

"I knew at the time it was a mistake, just as Beeching was a mistake,

"and that life was starting to get nastier."

Tram by tram, town by town, they were phased out.

Bristol, Liverpool...

Sheffield, Manchester...

and finally Glasgow - they all bade farewell.

London's last tram bowed out in 1952,

and thousands turned out to say goodbye and thank you.

CROWD SINGS "Auld Lang Syne"

And so, in the name of Londoners and London Transport,

I say, "Goodbye, old tram."

The public had mixed feelings about trams,

because a lot of people's childhood memories were days out on the trams.

And for workmen, that's the way they had been to work.

They were not uncomfortable, were quite reliable, all these things,

so when it was the last day of the trams, people would turn out

and there'd be bunting put up and there'd be a genuine sadness

that the trams were going

and something had passed, something was lost

in the organisation of towns and of people's lives.

CHEERING

Every urban tramway closed in Britain,

except Blackpool, home of the first electric tram back in 1885.

The town's link between the trams and joyful holidays

had been enough to keep it going

when everyone else was digging up the rails.

The tramway has always been extremely important to Blackpool.

It's played a very key role in tourism

and moving all our visitors along the seafront.

There was an enormous amount of pressure for the tramway to close,

but Blackpool kept faith,

and there have always been a large number of people within Blackpool,

both within the council over the years and in the local populace,

that have demanded that we retain our trams.

And we're very pleased that we have,

because they still maintain that wonderful seafront link.

People come who came to Blackpool when they were children in the 1930s,

and their amazement to see the same vehicles running

is clearly plain to see.

And people want to experience their youth again,

and they want the rest of their family to experience it.

And you very often hear people telling them,

"I rode on this tram during the war years,

"when I was stationed here as a WAF" or "a WREN!"

Of course, as long as people perpetuate that history,

the tramcar will always have a role to play.

SIREN WAILS

In fact, with today's choked traffic

and rush-hour chaos the worst it's ever been,

trams have been making something of a comeback.

I think more recently, planners have begun to realise

how disastrous cars are in cities,

how in fact the traffic jams have become insupportable,

not only extremely irritating, but they are economically disastrous

when you get these complete gridlocks.

And so I think people are beginning, planners are beginning

to think maybe the idea of trams as sort of designated routes

and all this thing isn't a bad idea.

A new generation of planners is looking to the tram.

Manchester, one of the first cities to scrap them,

was the first to re-introduce them, and others have followed.

It seems the old spark is still there, in a new guise.

There is this apparent effect, known as the spark effect,

credited to electric railed vehicles,

that if you electrify a train line, apparently people use it more than previously,

and if you put a tramway in, people ride on the trams

more than they did on the buses.

And I think that's been borne out by the new tramways

which have started to crop up around the country.

200 years after their first appearance on our roads,

new-look, hi-tech trams are once again carrying high hopes.

They're being seen as the solution to urban congestion

and the way forward to the future,

and this time around, they could be here to stay.

ALAN BENNETT: "If trams ever come back, though, they should come back

"not as curiosities, nor, God help us, as part of the heritage,

"but as a cheap and sensible way of getting from point A to point B

"and with a bit of poetry thrown in."

# We get to the end of the journey all right

# Or at least to the end of the track

# But while all the others prepare to alight

# We remain on the car and go back

# And when we get married

# Now, boys, here's a tip That ought to be useful to you

# We shan't spend too much on the honeymoon trip

# For we've made up our minds what to do

# We shall go, go, go for a ride

# On the car, car, car

# For we know how cosy the tops of the tramcars are

# The seats are so small and there's not much to pay

# You sit close together and spoon all the way

# And many a Miss will be Mrs someday

# Through riding on top of the car! #