Trams and Tramways in Lancashire and the North West

In the 19th Century, the towns and cities of Lancashire and the North West were expanding fast. This meant that, apart from a limited number of places with a good density of railway stations, the means by which people could get around their towns were limited to walking, cycling (later in the Century) and horse-drawn vehicles: horse buses and private carriages. There was a pressing need for more effective means of transport to enable larger towns to function effectively and tramways were the solution. A steel wheel running on a steel rail generates less friction and enables greater loads to be moved more easily and provides a smoother ride than a wheel running on a cobbled or gravelled street.

By Graham J. Fairhurst, Southport, Lancashire.

First in the country

Within the British Isles, the North West of England can claim several ‘firsts’ in connection with tramways. Birkenhead was the first place to have a street tramway; opened in 1860 (worked by horses). The idea was brought from the USA by an aptly named young, American entrepreneur: George Francis Train. He had first approached Liverpool with the idea but didn’t receive a positive response so he went over the Mersey to Birkenhead and this town took the idea on board. Blackpool was the first town to have an electric, street tramway, opened in 1885 (although preceded by Volks Electric Railway in Brighton and the Giant’s Causeway Tramway in Northern Ireland, both opened in 1883).

During the 1870s, many Lancashire towns got horse-drawn tramways either built by private companies with the permission of the local council or by the council itself as part of the gathering pace of municipal enterprise. Through the period of about 30 years from the 1870s, a number of towns allowed steam tram locomotives to be used for hauling the passenger trams.

Steam tram locomotives were in effect small steam locomotives with all their moving parts enclosed. They were also supposed to condense the steam they emitted. However, they soon gained a reputation for being noisy and dirty with their smoky exhaust contributing to the poor air quality in many towns. Nevertheless, they came to be regarded with some affection in some towns, often acquiring nicknames such as those in Accrington gaining the sobriquet; ‘the Baltic Fleet’. Accrington’s steam trams were the last urban steam trams in Britain and ‘the Baltic Fleet’ met its end in 1907.

Steam tram locomotives were built in some numbers by William Wilkinson and Co. of Holme House Foundry, Wigan who developed a successful, patented design which they allowed other locomotive builders to use. Beyer Peacock of Manchester built many steam tram locomotives. Horse trams themselves and steam tram trailers were also built by companies in the North West such as the Ashbury Carriage and Iron Company in Manchester, the Lancaster Railway Carriage and Wagon Company and the Starbuck Car and Wagon Company (later G. F. Milnes & Co.) in Birkenhead.

However, the days of the steam tram were numbered once electric tramway technology had resolved an effective and safe means of power supply; the overhead wire.

Electric Trams

From the late 1890s and into the early 1900s, most horse and steam operated tramways were rebuilt and electrified. Lancashire played a major role in this. In the 1890s, Dick, Kerr & Co., a Kilmarnock based railway engineering company took over a factory on the eastern side of Strand Road, Preston. This factory was vacant and had formerly been occupied by the North of England Carriage & Iron Co. The Dick, Kerr Company itself restructured and also formed a company called the Electric Railway and Tramway Carriage Works Ltd. which occupied the works on the east side of Strand Road. In parallel Dick, Kerr & Co. established the English Electric Manufacturing Company Ltd. to manufacture electrical generating equipment, motors and control gear and built a new factory on the western side of Strand Road. The Preston works produced an estimated 8,350 tramcars, far more than any other British tram manufacturing company. Dick, Kerr & Co. were also instrumental in the electrification of the Liverpool – Southport railway and other mainline railways. The Preston factory employed many women workers during World War 1 and became the setting in 1917 where the famous Dick, Kerr Ladies Football Club was established.

Other notable Lancashire firms producing tramway vehicles and their trucks were the British Westinghouse Company and the British Electric Car Company, both of Trafford Park and Mountain and Gibson of Bury. Many other Lancashire companies supplied other key equipment such as generating plant and cables.

Networks

From the early 1900s Lancashire had over 30 separate tramway undertakings from Barrow in the north to Warrington in the south. Most were municipally owned and operated but some were owned by private companies. The largest private system being that of the South Lancashire Tramways Company centred on Atherton which had a network serving most of the towns in the South Lancashire coalfield area and which stretched from Swinton on the edge of Manchester to St. Helens. This system linked the tramway systems of Liverpool, St. Helens, Wigan, Bolton, Farnworth and Salford. On its opening day, trams were driven right through from Liverpool to Bolton. However, in normal operation, whilst there were joint routes between adjoining operators, there were no through trams across the whole region. There also were plans that the South Lancashire Company lines and connected systems be used for carrying freight traffic from Liverpool docks to the factories in Bolton and other towns in the east of this region as well as coal from the local mines to factories. The plans envisaged the use ‘trains’ headed by an electric goods tram (as per American interurban tramways) pulling one or two goods trailer cars. The concept was forward-thinking as it was envisaged these trailers would carry the freight in containers which could then be easily transhipped to other road transport for delivery to final destination. Although a few passenger tramways in Britain carried freight, nowhere else was it envisaged on this scale. However, after the objections to the early proposals were overcome, the First World War intervened and the proposal ultimately came to nothing. This system did however, offer a public parcels service.

Southport had two, interconnected, electric tramway systems, one owned by the Corporation with a depot at Crowlands and one owned by the British Electric Traction group with a depot in Churchtown.

 

Crossing the Ribble

The two Southport systems were amalgamated under Corporation ownership in 1918. Two inter-urban lines were also proposed here: one to link from the inland end of Southport system at Kew to Ormskirk and one to link Southport to Lytham. The link to Lytham (and thereby also to Blackpool) was promoted in two guises. The first was a line running out from Crossens to the channel of the Ribble where the trams would transfer to a moving platform on stilts rising from undercarriages travelling on tracks on the sea bed, as per the ‘Daddy Longlegs’, Brighton and Rottingdean Electric Tramroad with operated erratically between1896 and 1901.

On the north side of the Ribble, the line would have joined to the end of the Lytham tramway at East Beach. The second scheme was more realistic and proposed a line running from Crossens along the coastal embankment to near Hesketh Bank where it turned northwards onto a pier which linked to a transporter bridge of the type which used to link Widnes to Runcorn. This moving platform would cross the navigable river channel and link to the north side of the estuary at Freckleton. There, it was envisaged the trams would meet an eastward extension of the Lytham system and a westward extension of the Preston system. The second scheme was promoted as the Southport and Lytham Tramroad Company and a 1900 Parliamentary Bill authorised its construction. However, the cost was estimated at £183,500 (around £25 million today) and the money couldn’t be raised. It is thought that was in part due to the technical problems the Widnes – Runcorn bridge was having at the time causing doubts among potential investors.

This proposed link was but one of many examples of attempts to link the various tramway systems. However, where the density of towns of towns was high (and where there were no major rivers to cross) many systems did get connected to neighbouring ones and there were many examples of joint, cross-boundary routes between towns. As stated, it was possible to travel by tram all the way from Liverpool to Bacup (but not on the same tram!).

Practical Problems

The complex geography to the east of Manchester meant that Lancashire tramways linked to those in Cheshire, operated by Stockport Corporation and by the Stalybridge, Hyde, Mossley and Dukinfield Tramways and Electricity Board (SHMD – these adjoining local authorities found it logical to provide many services through formalised joint working arrangements). The SHMD system was notable for its steep gradients, something which led to two serious, fatal accidents in a single year; 1911.

Most systems were standard gauge, including the majority in the south of the County. However, the tramways of East Lancashire (a number of connected systems from Darwen and Blackburn through Accrington to Rossendale and Bacup and between Burnley and Colne) were 4 foot gauge.

Bacup had the unusual distinction of two, town centre tramway termini close to each other but of different gauges: 4 foot gauge from Rawtenstall and standard gauge from Rochdale. Wigan’s own electric tramways were of two gauges, standard and 3 foot 6 inch gauge.

Closures

The heyday of the tram in Lancashire and much of the rest of Britain was the period up to 1930. After the First World War, there were few extensions to the established systems and many also started to operated buses as public transport expanded.

By the early 1930s the trams and infrastructures of many systems were becoming due for renewal and at the same time Leyland Motors had a sustained and persuasive sales drive for their buses. A large number of systems closed down during the 1930s, to be replaced by buses. The South Lancashire Tramways Company closed its routes through the 1930s and converted many to trolleybus operation and adopted the name of its parent company: Lancashire United Transport.

The Second World War staved off closure of the systems in Bolton, Darwen, Blackburn, Bury, Oldham, SHMD, Salford and Manchester, but by 1949 these had all closed down.

Although Manchester had a large tramway system, it hadn’t modernised it to the same extent as other large British cities such as Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield.

Surviving Trams

By the 1950s the only remaining tramway systems in Lancashire were those of Liverpool and Blackpool. Both had modernised and both had substantial proportions of their systems on reserved track, separated from other road users.

Liverpool had a very large system and had built long lengths of reserved track in the 1930s to serve new housing suburbs, with one line stretching out along the East Lancashire Road to Kirkby. It had also developed some very attractive modern trams; the ‘Green Goddesses’. It was therefore very sad when Liverpool decided to close down its system and the city’s last tram ran in 1957 (the systems in Leeds and Sheffield followed a few years later and Glasgow’s last trams ran in 1962).

The survival of Blackpool’s tramway owes much to two factors: Walter Luff, its Transport Manager from 1933 to 1954, who instituted a modernisation plan. And to its long, mostly reserved track tramway from Starr Gate in the south to the neighbouring town of Fleetwood in the north. For many years this was Britain’s last remaining tramway and Fleetwood was the only town still with a street tramway.

Trams today

The Blackpool system has fortunately seen further investment in recent years, including a fleet of new trams with many older ones also being retained for ‘heritage operation’. [Check out their website to have a ride on one!]

Manchester was the first British city to get a second-generation tramway in 1992 and this has now been extended many times to create a new system, ‘Metrolink’, extending over 100 kilometres.

Liverpool very actively promoted a new tramway around the Millennium, but sadly the Government failed to provide funding and the system wasn’t built. However, there are possibilities of the scheme being resurrected.

A tramway scheme is also being promoted in Preston – learn more here.

It is appropriate that Birkenhead is the location of one of Britain’s best heritage tramways and the only one operating in the public realm. The tramway links the Mersey ferry to an excellent transport museum and is operated by an interesting group of electric trams, including two from Hong Kong (new in 1992) and representatives from the local tramways in Birkenhead, Wallasey and Liverpool. The tramway also has some horse trams of which the star exhibit is Birkenhead number 7 built by Starbuck Car and Wagon Company of Birkenhead in 1876. This tram was sold to the Birkdale and Southport Tramways Company in the 1890 and was rescued in the 1970s from a Birkdale coal yard where the tram body has been used as a store. The heritage tramway is operated by the Wirral Transport Museum and Heritage Tramway.

Buses

Following the demise of most of the tramways in Lancashire, 27 municipalities operated good networks of buses along with some private and nationalised bus companies. Continuing the tradition with the tramways, each municipality had a distinctive livery for its buses, something which contributed to a sense of place and civic pride. Some of this was lost when many of the public transport operations in the Manchester and Liverpool areas were brought under regional management between 1969 and 1974.

Bus deregulation in 1986 caused many changes to public transport, not least a deterioration in services. It aimed to move those bus operations in the public sector to the private sector. Whilst some North West councils resisted this and their municipal-owned bus services were able to survive the ‘bus wars’ (of competing services) which occurred, most have now ended up in the private sector. It is believed that Warrington and Blackpool are the last remaining municipal owned undertakings in the North West.

Learn more:

• Information in this article is from the author’s own researches
• Regional booklets on historic tramways systems published by the Light Rail Transit Association
• South Lancashire Tramways by E. K. Stretch, published by Manchester Transport Museum Society in 1972.