Entries
The riverside loop that lost its northern leg
6 October 2026
This was a short loop running along both banks of the river and crossing at two bridges. When the upstream bridge was rebuilt for heavier road traffic, the tram track on it was not relaid, and the northern half of the loop was abandoned. The southern track carried on as a stub terminus for roughly another ten years. I have the closure year for the north leg from a printed timetable, but the exact last day of passenger service I have not been able to confirm.
Depot conversions: from tram sheds to bus garages
28 September 2026
When a system switched to buses it often kept the depot building and simply re-fitted it. The tall doors suited double-deck buses, and the yard already had room to turn vehicles. In several that I have looked at you can still read the original use: the spacing of old inspection pits, filled-in rail grooves in the apron, and brackets high on the walls where the overhead feeders were once anchored.
Four-wheel cars and why the long bogie cars replaced them
19 September 2026
The earliest electric cars were short and ran on four wheels in a single rigid frame. They were cheap but rode roughly, especially on worn track, and could not carry many passengers. As loadings rose, most systems moved to longer cars carried on two pivoting bogies, which rode more steadily and held more people. A handful of the old four-wheel cars outlived passenger service as sand or works cars.
Single track with passing loops on the hill route
11 September 2026
One suburban route climbed a hill on a single track with passing loops roughly every few hundred metres. Cars waited at a loop for the opposing service before going on. This kept costs down but limited how often trams could run, and as the suburb grew the single track became the reason the line was eventually cut back rather than doubled.
Reading a destination blind
2 September 2026
Old photographs are easier to place once you can read the roller blinds on the front of a car. The wording and the order of place names changed over the years as routes were extended, so a blind can narrow a photo to a particular period even when nothing is written on the back. I keep a rough list of the blind wordings I have seen and the dates I can tie them to.
The line that was replaced by a trolleybus, then a diesel bus
24 August 2026
A busy radial route lost its trams and gained trolleybuses within a year or two, which reused much of the overhead structure. The trolleybuses themselves lasted only about a decade before diesel buses took over and the wires came down. It is a common sequence, and it means some streets carried three different kinds of public transport inside a single lifetime.
Why some gauges were a little wider than standard
16 August 2026
Not every tramway used standard railway gauge. A few were built a little wider or narrower, sometimes to fit existing street works, sometimes to keep them separate from the main railway. The choice mattered later: a non-standard gauge made it harder to buy second-hand cars from other cities, which pushed some small systems to close sooner. I am still checking the gauge figures I have noted and would not treat them as firm.
Overhead versus conduit in the city centre
7 August 2026
A number of city centres did not allow overhead wires on their grandest streets and used an underground conduit instead, with a plough picking up current from a slot between the rails. The conduit was expensive to build and awkward to keep clear of water and grit, so it was usually confined to the central area, with a changeover point where cars switched to ordinary trolley poles.
Terminus arrangements: stub, loop and turntable
29 July 2026
How a line ended tells you a lot about the cars that ran it. Double-ended cars could use a simple stub and reverse. Single-ended cars needed a loop or, rarely, a turntable to face the right way. When I find a loop drawn on an old street plan it usually means single-ended cars worked that route, which helps date the rolling stock.
The works that outlived the passenger service
20 July 2026
After passenger trams stopped, some systems kept a short length of track and a few works cars for a while to recover rail, overhead and scrap. These movements rarely appear in timetables, so the real last date a tram ran under its own power can be years after the official closing day printed in the papers.