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A photographic overview of the little-known cars and engineers that kept British tramways running smoothly and safely. While generally unfamiliar to the passengers that used tramways, works trams were an essential facet of the efficient operation of any system—large or small—and this book presents an overview of the great variety of works trams that served the first generation of tramways in the British Isles. Although construction of most tramways was left to the contractor employed on the work, once this was completed the responsibility for the maintenance and safe operation of the system fell on the operator. The larger the operator, the greater and more varied the fleet of works cars employed; specialist vehicles were constructed for specific duties. Smaller operators, however, did not have this luxury, relying instead on one or two dedicated works cars or, more often, a passenger car temporarily assigned to that work. This book is a pictorial survey of the many weird and wonderful works cars that once graced Britain’s first generation tramways.
It is almost 100 years since the first tram was preserved in Britain, in the century since then a great variety of trams have been saved from tramway systems small and large. Some trams were purchased directly out of service and others were acquired after many years alternative usage, some being summer houses or homes, while others were used on farms or allotments where they served as sheds and out buildings, before being lovingly restored over many years. The story of tram preservation is not wholly positive, in the early days many trams suffered from being stored in the open at unsafe sites, where the historic vehicles were often subjected to acts of vandalism and suffered badly from the weather. This changed to a large extent in 1959, with the acquisition of the site of the future National Tramway Museum at Crich in Derbyshire,, where a comprehensive collection of trams from all over Britain and also foreign tram networks has been assembled, to secure a collection of tramcars for future generations. There is also today fine collections of trams in other museums in Britain and Ireland, which cover much of the rich history of this once common form of public transport. This book looks at almost 200 of these trams when they were in service, through historic photographs, prior to their withdrawal and eventual preservation.
From the horse-drawn trams of the nineteenth century to the larger electric models of the early twentieth, this reliable form of public transport revolutionised town travel by making it affordable enough for working people to use. From the 1930s, the rise of the trolleybus, which also picked up power from overhead cables but ran without expensive tracks, looked set to supersede the tram – but ultimately, by the 1950s, both fell victim to motor buses and private cars. However, since the 1980s the environmental benefits of light rail have encouraged a growing comeback for trams on our crowded and polluted city streets. Using beautiful contemporary photographs, this is the fascinating story of the rise, fall and revival of this everyday, yet sometimes controversial, mode of urban transport.
During the history of Britain’s electric tramcar fleets, many thousands were manufactured of which the vast majority saw out their operational life with a single owner. However, for several hundred there was to be a second – if not, in certain cases, a third – career with a new operator. Almost from the dawn of the electric era in the late 19th century tramcars were loaned or bought and sold between operators. The reasons for this were multifarious. Sometimes the aspirations of the original owners for traffic proved wildly optimistic and the fleet was downsized to reflect better the actual passenger levels. War was a further cause as operators sought to strengthen their fleets to cater for unexpectedly high level of demand or to replace trams destroyed by enemy action. For other operators, modernization represented an opportunity to sell older cars while, certainly from the 1930s, a number of operators – such as Aberdeen, Leeds and Sunderland – took advantage of the demise of tramways elsewhere to supplement their fleet with trams that were being withdrawn but which still had many years of useful operational life in them. The process was to continue right through to the mid-1950s when Glasgow took advantage of the demise of the once-extensive Liverpool system to purchase a number of the streamlined bogie bogie cars that were built in the late 1930s. In this book the author provides a pictorial history – with detailed captions – to the many electric trams that were to operate with more than one tramway during the period up to the closure of the closure of the Glasgow system in 1962.
Transport is key to our daily lives. The transport system is essential to ensure the movement of people and goods, and most of us will use the roads or public transport every day. Vast sums are tied up in it and are spent on trying to resolve the problems of congestion and delays. And yet it is a most neglected field of politics. Britain has never had a coherent transport policy. Transport ministers are regarded as minnows compared with their ‘big beast’ colleagues in other ministries. Successive governments have barely attempted to get to grips with the challenge of getting people around efficiently and safely while limiting the environmental damage caused by transport. In this entertaining polemic, Christian Wolmar, an author and journalist who has written about transport for over two decades, explains why politicians have not addressed the crucial issue of balancing transport needs with environmental considerations. Instead, they have been seduced by the popularity of the car and pressure from the car lobby, and they have been sidetracked by dogma. Solutions are at hand – and successful examples can be seen elsewhere in Europe – but courage and clear thinking are needed if they are to be implemented.
Highlighting long term themes in Britain's transport history, this book looks at the dilemmas facing modern society and suggests several possible solutions. It covers all the major forms of transport, from the horse to the aeroplane, setting them in their historical context.
Whether you are traveling to Great Britain or just want to understand British popular culture, this unique dictionary will answer your questions. British English from A to Zed contains more than 5,500 British terms and their American equivalents, each with a short explanation of the term’s history and an example of its use. The appendixes provide valuable supplemental material with differences between British and American pronunciation, grammar, and spelling as well as terms grouped in specific areas such as currency, weight, and numbers. This dictionary will help you unravel the meanings of: • Berk (idiot) • Bevvied up (drunk) • Crisps (potato chips) • Erk (rookie) • To judder (to shake) • Noughts and crosses (tic-tac-toe) • And more! George Bernard Shaw famously said that the British and Americans were “two peoples separated by a common language.” This book bridges that gap.