CARDIFF CORPORATION No 131 1902.
At the dawn of the electric tramway era, horses were still the predominant mode of traction for road vehicles and in London alone 300,000 plied the city streets at a time when the total number of motor vehicles in the whole of the country was just 17,000. For early tramway operators was the need to keep the streets reasonably clean to ensure that tramlines did not become completely blocked with mud and animal waste. An important weapon in their armoury was the water car and many operators found it necessary to incorporate at least one as part of their fleet even though - partly because of their unglamorous role perhaps, only one was to survive into preservation. This was built in Preston by the electric railway and tramway carriage works as a 1000 gallon rail cleaning car for Cardiff, at a cost of £600. It was delivered as a completely open car, with a central water tank, gaining the number 131 in 1905. By 1913 the tank had been enclosed and in 1919 it was fitted with slipper brakes. From 1920 it was used for grinding out corrugations on the track around Cardiff, and it was also used to take the traffic superintendent home to Cathays after the days operations had been completed.
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SHEFFIELD TRANSPORT DEPARTMENT No 330. 1919.
During the early years of the electric traction era, it was normally necessary for tramway undertakings to purchase directly from the manufacturers any vehicles they required, whether passenger trams or works cars ( as in the case of Cardiff 131 ). As time went by, however it was common for operators to fill any gaps in their works fleet by converting redundant passenger trams, a practice that is illustrated by Sheffield 330. 330 began life as an open balconied double deck passenger tram that was built in 1919 by English Electric to the somewhat narrower 4-foot gauge for Bradford Corporation. It operated there in this guise for over twenty years as car 251 before being purchased by Sheffield Corporation in 1943 as part of a batch of 24 second hand trams from Newcastle ( 14 ) and Bradford ( 10 ) in order to replace cars that had been destroyed or damaged in the blitz, at a time when new tramcars were impossible to come by.
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GATESHEAD and DISTRICT TRAMWAYS CO, No 5. 1927.
Gateshead number 5 comes from an innovative tramway that pioneered many ideas and experiments over the years. The system itself was electrified in 1901 but faced a challenge in that a number of routes serving densely populated areas were unsuitable for double decker's because of the need to negotiate a low bridge near Gateshead station at the hub of the network. The solution they resorted to involved the purchase of extra long bogie mounted single decker's with far greater standing capacity than seated. The first tramcars for the system were purchased from established manufacturers but when Gateshead and District Tramway Co decided to modernise its fleet between 1923 and 1928 most of the new single decker's were built at its Sunderland Road works. Gateshead 5 was one of these. Built in 1927 it provided longitudinal seating capacity for 48 and strap hangers for 40 standing passengers, though as many as 70 standees were known to be carried. The saloon incorporated separate smokers and non smokers compartments with a centre partition.
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HALLE ANDER SAALE ( HAVAG ) TRAMWAYS No 902. 1969.
In many ways tramcars were rather better suited to the planned economies of the former Soviet Bloc, where they were much less susceptible to the vagaries and unpredictability associated with market economies in the west. There they were relatively economical to build and operate by large scale state run enterprises. For many years after the second world war the largest tram producer in the world was CKD Tatra which was based in Prague and exported its products throughout the Soviet Bloc including Halle, which was one of the first cities in the world to operate an electric tramway, having installed one as long ago as 1891. Halle 902 was built in 1969 as a standard T4D which was an eastern European adaptation of a hugely successful design of tramcar known as the PCC ( standing for `Presidents Conference Committee` ) which originated in the United States during the 1930s, as such, it was the commonest type of tramcar behind the iron curtain, indeed, some 17,622 Tatras of this type ( T3/T4s ) were built, which is more than any other type of tram anywhere in the world.
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NEW YORK THIRD AVENUE TRANSIT No 674. 1939.
New York third avenue railway system number 674 is the sole representative in the museum of the vast north American tramway systems that by 1917 covered some 45,000 miles of track across the United States alone, over which around 80,000 trams ( or trolley cars as they were referred to over there ) plied for service. The third avenue railway system was a street tramway operator whose main line ran along Manhattan's third avenue with additional lines in the Bronx, Westchester county and elsewhere in Manhattan. No 674 is a single deck, all enclosed semi convertible bogie electric tramcar, its livery is red and cream with a seating capacity of 49. The manufacturer of the body was Third Avenue Railway System, Third Avenue and Sixty Fifth street repair shop. The manufacturer of the truck was Brill 77E Bogies ( from older cars ). They were withdrawn from service in 1948 in New York and 1969 in Vienna.
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BLACKPOOL TRANSPORT SERVICES No 630. 1937.
Blackpool 630 is a tram whose appearance has undergone a radical transformation over the seven plus decades since its introduction in 1937. Originally numbered 293, it was a Brush built successor to a then innovative design known as the `Railcoach`, which sought to emulate the levels of comfort associated with the most advanced road coaches of the day. Number 630 was not one of the original railcoaches, which had been built earlier in the decade by English Electric, but formed part of a subsequent batch of 20 very similar looking tramcars that were ordered from Brush and Co of Loughborough following the closure of the adjoining Lytham St Annes tramway in 1937.
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