[PRCo] Fwd: Trams etc. in the UK more Youtube

Wed Feb 23 10:15:14 EST 2011

Another installment of video links from Peter Folger.   This time it's all from the British Isles.    I've added the subway (underground) and modern light rail videos and the commentary.   A bit of information for those unfamiliar.  fws
1)   Driving on the left may seem a tad strange to us but it isn't wrong side; it's merely the other side.   When you to consider that India (with over a billion people), South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, most of southeast Asia, Japan, and the British Isles drive on the left, that's a substantial share of the market for vehicles ... somewhere around 30 percent of the world.   The true minority are the cyclists who try to drive down the middle.   :<)    

2)  The double-deck cars were simply a different solution to the same problems that we had here.   In every nation the industry began with short, four-wheel (two-axle in European parlance) cars that were light enough to be pulled by horses and handled usually by two men, one to drive the beasts and one to collect the fares.   A nickel fare was very extravagant ... think of it as about $6 to $8 today.  The transit industry needed to reduce costs in order to attract riders and affect some economy of scale.  Costs also had to be reduced to stay within franchise requirements because promoters were often crazy enough to agree to a nickel fare forever.   There were different solutions to reduce those costs in different nations.

(a) we favored lengthening cars to somewhere between 40 and 50 feet and eliminating, to the degree possible, the conductors.   Some cities ran conductors very late ... San Francisco and Chicago until 1958, New Orleans until 1963, Philadelphia into the early 1970s.

(b) In Europe, where the streets were often too narrow for long cars, other solutions were needed.  Eliminating conductors was also not practical because, in most cases, the railways were not private but were city owned.  It never was proper to fire people when politicians are involved.    Britain chose almost without exception to go up and add a second deck.   The cars might have only been 35 to 40 feet long but you can great productivity out of a conductor when you add another deck!   

(c)  Germany added Biwagen, also known as Anhangern.   I love that second word better, don't you?   It clearly says trailer.   For every trailer you add, you don't a motorman.   Eventually they had schnafnerlos (conducterless) trailers for people with seasonal or weekly passes.   That evolved into ticket machines at curb or on the cars and that scheme went worldwide.  They did mostly because they had trouble finding conductors.   Their problem was simply that most of the men were killed off or maimed in World War II and it was after 1950 until the 12-year-olds were old enough to work.   They depended on guest workers (Gastarbeitern) for their economic miracle of the 1960s and for simple survival in the 1950s.   Getting rid of conductors simple economic survival in Germany.

So don't think of these things as strange ... think of them simply as other ways to solve a problem.   Are the double-deck vehicles still popular?   No because another movement happened worldwide ... the handicapped / disabled have a right to mobility too.  Low floor trams and buses have captured the world market.    

The vehicles ... buses, trams or light rail cars, automobiles, trucks ... look the same no matter what continent you are on these days because they come out of the same factories and because the rules are pretty much the same everywhere.    

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Peter Folger" <transitman at maine.rr.com>
Date: February 14, 2011 1:03:58 AM EST
To: "Peter Folger" <transitman at maine.rr.com>
Subject: Trams etc. in the UK more Youtube

Trams etc. in the UK more Youtube:
MOTS - Dedicated to the old Tuesday night shows!

Ride on the Tramcar through Belfast (1901).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpU4DgefFPo&feature=relmfu

Blackpool Tram Centenery 1985 No1.   This was a great event with cars borrowed from the Science Museum in Edinburgh and from the National Tramway Museum in Crich.   It was during the reign of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan ... you could buy rubber face masks of both in the stores in Blackpool.   What a summer.   I bumped into the late Al Haij from Portland along the Promenade in Blackpool that June.  fws

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9voIzI46lJc&feature=related

Blackpool Tram Centenery 1985 No2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXNjGJihSAQ&playnext=1&list=PLF308AABB5A79F806

BLACKPOOL TRAMS JUNE 2010.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaS9I9G7ZTk&feature=fvst

BLACKPOOL TOTALLY TRANSPORT 2009.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeulJr2AM_g&feature=relmfu

Blackpool Trams In Action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67tfftuVqRE&feature=related

Electric Tram Rides from Forster Square, Bradford (1902).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hyh58ngpIs&feature=related

Tram Ride into Halifax (1902).   No, not Nova Scotia but Halifax in Yorkshire, about 10 miles west south west of Leeds, and five miles from Bradford.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfv7xdQdbUY&feature=relmfu

LONDON TRAMS - LEYTONSTONE 1938.    Most of the good London stuff has been removed from the internet for copyright infringement.   You'll have to go to the London Transport website and buy it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaYGmohPByg&feature=related

For those who might go to London, here is something more recent:   The History Channel's Modern Marvels series on the London Underground in four parts.   Like so many History Channel items, there is no peer review and it has errors.   Examples ... yes the Metropolitan (and Circle Line) was a steam underground and you can see the blocked up vents today but the video that accompanies the first mention isn't appropriate.  In part 3 we are told that they build munitions in the subway while we are shown a woman rewinding a traction motor!   At minute 7 second 32 in the third film, the steam locomotive is not LT but British Railways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DLAHehn4Ag

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IPjeRQ8lRw&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5p3p-fXskQ&feature=related

Skip everything to minute 16 on the 4th section.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDVoV91t390&feature=related

What they have not explained ... two types of rolling stock ... Underground (wider clearances) and tube stock (those with the round tops).

SHEFFIELD TRAMS 1957-60.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fqv6PTHKW0

Sheffield Remembered - The Last Trams - NDVD1046.   This happened in the late fall of 1960.   Those steamlined cars had the air brake valves built into the controllers.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN57t1mxt3o&feature=fvwrel

MANCHESTER TROLLEYBUSES 1946.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYkw7USOB7c&feature=related

ABERDEEN TRAMS AND BUSES.   Northeast coast of Scotland.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4IkAPvaLvo

Old Swan Liverpool in the 1950's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIdKgxgKGcs

Old Swan Liverpool in the 1950's (2).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptjQDreSQBM&feature=related

Glasgow's (Scotland) Last Tram in 1962.      This is the one that gets me the most because I spent three days wandering around that city in 1960 ... it was a lot like Pittsburgh ... a crusty old steel town.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO2DmTnXlDA

Glasgow also has an underground.   When I saw it in 1960 with the old cars, they were in primer paint on the back side and bright red on the front side.   Why, except for inspections the cars never left the tunnel.   At night they would pull up one train behind each other at the shop, the crews would open the end doors and walk through the trains and then climb up a steel ladder to the surface and go home.  If a car broke down, it was lifted out of the subway with a crane ... the shop was above the subway with a huge hole in the floor.   I was lucky enough to be in the shop when one broke down and have pictures of a car being replaced!   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvdcTTo7Q0U

The first is horribly unsharp but its gone today and this is all you have to remember the elevated in Liverpool.   The second may be a world war two era or a recreation thereof.   Why isn't the railway needed.   This was a steamship building and operating city.   We don't run passenger ships across the Atlantic any longer.   The British empire collapsed.   The population of Liverpool did a number (percentage wise) about the same as Detroit ... went from 850,000 in 1931 to about 430,000 in 2001.   Guess that's why the Beetles left town.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSpbvfVQHQA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NArWKpSp0MU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvdjW8F6YEg&feature=related

Something else for the new visitors are all the new light rail lines....

Manchester was the first British city to have light rail.   It was built into the suburbs using former British Railways commuter lines.  It's been around so long that here is a new generation of cars:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WaD65nE7xE&feature=related

The second largest city in England is Birmingham and it also open a light rail line on a former British Railways commuter railroad line following the Manchester model:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GC40_33dc8&feature=autoplay&list=PL449D1F7B707A2D4A&index=22&playnext=2

So did Nottingham ... same model ... start on the city streets and then dash on the suburbs on the old railroad lines.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV6936v6RR8 

And Sheffield - I photographed double deck trams on this same street 51 years ago.   The northeast end of this line -- Meadow Hall is a shopping mall that rivals any of those monster covered malls in the USA except for several aspects:  (1) you pay to park your car in the mall garage, (2) you pay to get there by tram, and finally (3) there is also a train station at the mall.   We wouldn't understand the concept in this country!   We would think parking should be free, i.e. hidden in the price of the merchandise.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBJ1Iroi_E4

There is also the continually expanding Docklands Light Railway on the East Side of London (out of Bank tube station)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJFIvxyLYyQ

And the Croydon line (built largely on British Railways branches)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKkY4rmAqZQ

And Dublin --- not the UK but the the capital of the Free State of Ireland -- now has light rail and electrified commuter trains.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzkKuRT9tJg&feature=related

And if you are anywhere near Manchester or Sheffield, you have visit the National Tramway Museum in Crich.   Of course I'm going to stick in the link to London Transport 1622, the car they brought back to life from a chicken coop because it's the only car Fred ever ran at Crich.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNqdMh44imM&feature=related

But they also put on some great events.   Look at this World War II weekend:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p0KMm5Mvzk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGej3ba7vgs&feature=related

Peter Folger
P.O.Box 1741
Biddeford, ME 04005-1741
transitman at maine.rr.com