Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Trams and Trolleybuses
    Trams and Trolleybuses
    Trams and Trolleybuses
    Ebook94 pages53 minutes

    Trams and Trolleybuses

    By Oliver Green

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateFeb 22, 2018
    ISBN9781784422493
    Trams and Trolleybuses
    Author

    Oliver Green

    Oliver Green is former Head Curator of the London Transport Museum and is now its Research Fellow. He has lectured and published extensively on transport art, design and history. He is based in the UK.

    Read more from Oliver Green

    Related to Trams and Trolleybuses

    Titles in the series (100)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Technology & Engineering For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      History Of Steam Shovels

      Feb 25, 2022

      History Of Steam Shovels
      4 min read

    • Article

      Northwich ICI traffic

      Apr 16, 2018

      Northwich ICI traffic
      5 min read

    • Article

      Main Line Diesel Pioneers

      Nov 12, 2019

      Main Line Diesel Pioneers
      7 min read

    • Article

      New Zealand Bush Tractors

      Jun 7, 2022

      New Zealand Bush Tractors
      11 min read

    • Article

      1966 Bsa Lightning

      Nov 25, 2019

      1966 Bsa Lightning
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Calder Vale Mineral Railway

      Feb 24, 2022

      The Calder Vale Mineral Railway
      11 min read

    • Article

      Sojourns on The Southern

      Jan 19, 2023

      Sojourns on The Southern
      25 min read

    • Article

      The Quest for Economy

      Nov 12, 2019

      The Quest for Economy
      10 min read

    • Article

      Camel Quay

      Dec 30, 2021

      Camel Quay
      6 min read

    • Article

      Modelling Water

      Sep 7, 2023

      Modelling Water
      1 min read

    • Article

      History Of Steam Shovels

      Jan 15, 2021

      History Of Steam Shovels
      8 min read

    • Article

      A-z Of Steam Vehicles

      Feb 24, 2023

      A-z Of Steam Vehicles
      6 min read

    • Article

      History Of Steam Shovels

      Jul 30, 2021

      History Of Steam Shovels
      6 min read

    • Article

      Hello, Hello, Hello...

      Dec 20, 2021

      Hello, Hello, Hello...
      1 min read

    • Article

      History Of Steam Shovels

      Sep 24, 2021

      This series focuses on steam shovels produced by the manufacturers covered. Some phased out steam in favour of diesel, petrol or electricity to power their excavators and prospered in later years, but those who chose to remain with steam had disappea

      6 min read

    • Article

      Newton Heath

      May 18, 2023

      Newton Heath
      5 min read

    • Article

      A-z Of Steam Vehicles

      Aug 25, 2023

      A-z Of Steam Vehicles
      6 min read

    • Article

      Rolling Stock

      May 18, 2023

      Rolling Stock
      1 min read

    • Article

      Cacciatore Rosso

      Oct 31, 2020

      Cacciatore Rosso
      6 min read

    • Article

      Looking Back

      Apr 29, 2022

      Looking Back
      3 min read

    • Article

      RIVAL FORCES: BEST and HOLT

      Oct 8, 2021

      RIVAL FORCES: BEST and HOLT
      8 min read

    • Article

      Bsa M20

      Nov 26, 2018

      Bsa M20
      9 min read

    • Article

      Quarter-litre Charmer

      Apr 2, 2022

      Quarter-litre Charmer
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Ideas Man

      Sep 1, 2021

      The Ideas Man
      10 min read

    • Article

      Motor Rail Dumpers

      Oct 29, 2021

      Motor Rail Dumpers
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Trams and Trolleybuses

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Trams and Trolleybuses - Oliver Green

      HORSE AND RAIL

      The tram and the tramway have had a roller coaster ride in Britain. Both names have been used for more than two hundred years, but their meaning has shifted as well as the technology they represent. In 1800 they referred to the vehicles and tracks of primitive goods railways. Neither name has ever been commonly used in the United States, where the first true ‘street railways’ were introduced. Early passenger trams there were known simply as horsecars and their mechanised successors have always been called streetcars or trolleys.

      The distinction between a tramway and a railway has also been blurred over the years both in legal terminology and in popular use. Although the term light rail has been widely adopted on both sides of the Atlantic since the 1970s, it is a catch-all description rarely used in everyday speech. In the simplest definition today, a tramway is a type of light railway which shares its right of way with other traffic, often on a public highway.

      A full-scale railway in the United Kingdom has always had its own defined and authorised right of way, a distinction never strictly applied in the United States. The new generation of light railways built in Britain since the 1980s often combines operation on former railway alignments with sections of urban street running. These are still known in the United Kingdom as tramways, operated by rail vehicles called trams.

      At the start of the nineteenth century the terms were almost interchangeable. Both tramway and railway were used to describe the short early plateways on which goods and minerals were transported between mines, canals and harbours. All of them used horse power before the development of reliable steam locomotives in the 1820s. Their freight, usually coal or iron ore, was carried in small open wagons, which were referred to individually as trams or trucks but became trains when coupled together. The primitive iron trackwork enabled horses to pull heavier loads over these tracks than was possible on an uneven road surface.

      None of these lines were designed to carry passengers but inevitably some tried it as a sideline to their main business of goods transport. The first recorded passenger operation was on the ‘Oystermouth Railway or Tramroad’ in South Wales, which advertised a carriage service along the Gower Peninsula from Swansea in 1807. This was essentially a novelty sightseeing attraction for parties of wealthy tourists. Although it continued to operate for some years it was not copied anywhere else in Britain. The Oystermouth ‘tramcar’, which resembled a one-horse stagecoach with iron wheels, was a one-off not a prototype or a trendsetter.

      Is this the first or second passenger tramcar built in Britain? A sketch of the original Oystermouth rail carriage at Swansea drawn by Miss J. Alford in 1819. A full-size reconstruction of the car based on this drawing is on display at Swansea Museum.

      A tramway providing a regular public transport service on urban streets came many years later in New York City. Urban coach services by ‘omnibus’ (a fleet name adopted from the Latin meaning ‘for all’) were introduced on fixed routes in Paris (1828) and London (1829). Rapidly growing New York followed soon afterwards, where the omnibus owners often had difficulty running their heavy vehicles on the badly made up city streets of Manhattan in winter. It occurred to someone that running horsecars on rails in the road would give a smoother ride and make much more efficient use of horse power.

      Coincidentally, the New York & Harlem Railroad Company was given permission in 1831 to build the city’s first railway right on the streets. It was only allowed to use animal power in the built-up area of the city. Steam locomotives were banned from the built-up area following a number of boiler explosions. This led directly to the development of a local horsecar service on the new street railway in Manhattan.

      The horse-drawn streetcar soon emerged in New York as a distinct vehicle type. It was smaller than a long-distance railroad car but twice the size of a city omnibus. A new form of urban passenger transport had appeared, though it was not immediately emulated in other growing towns in the United States or Europe. In Britain the notion of street railways was already

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1