For the love of trams by Michael Meighan
I can’t speak for any other cities but I wonder whether there exists within them quite the same passion that Glasgow citizens have for their transport systems; their trams, trolleybuses, paddle steamers, steam trains and one of the smallest underground systems in the world.
The ‘Subway’ travels through 15 stations round a 10-mile circular route in inner Glasgow. It was opened in 1896 and through the years it has had complete renovations, the latest only in 2024. In all of this time it has never expanded.
The second half of the 20th century was when there was a revolution in Glasgow’s transport systems. Along with the disappearance of steam locomotives we lost two main railway termini; Buchanan Street and St Enoch’s with its wonderful neo-Gothic hotel. The steam trains that took me and my dad from Anderston Cross station to the football, and me through the tunnels from Charing Cross to my school on Duke Street. The latter was only for one year as the lines closed until the appearance of the new electrified ‘Blue Trains’.
It was always a joy for Glaswegians to travel ‘doon the water’ from the Broomielaw on one of the many paddle steamers, all gone except for the Waverley, the world’s last oceangoing paddle steamer, preserved and still sailing on the Clyde. They continued to do this on the new turbine steamers until the love for the new package trips to Spain attracted their attention.
It was only in the late 1950’s/early 1960s that we said farewell to the horse and cart, replaced by the petrol and diesel lorry. The stables that housed over 50,000 horses disappeared over a short time. The last that went seemed to be the distiller’s ‘drays’ that would carry crates and casks of Buchanan’s ‘Black and White’ whisky from the bonded warehouses in Washington street to the pubs, bottling halls and ships.
But of all modes of transport, the Glaswegian has always had a fascination with the legendary Glasgow tram and still talks in loving terms of journeys within the city, or at one time, well beyond the city boundaries to Paisley or Coatbridge. Even the trip from a crowded city centre to leafy Kelvinside was a pleasure.
The idea for trams in Glasgow actually came from two separate London syndicates who proposed bills in Parliament to construct tramlines in the city. Both bills were opposed by Glasgow Corporation but after some negotiation they allowed an amalgamation of the bills but with the clever clause allowing them to take over the enterprise within six months of passing of the Act. Within that period the Corporation decided that they would exercise their right and took over ownership of the lines but allowed the original promoters to form a new company and lease the lines for twenty-three years.
The Company ownership of the tram system lasted only twenty years, for it was then taken over in its entirety by Glasgow Corporation when it decided that it would not renew the leases and would run the trams themselves. By that time, in 1894, the GTOC had become a major private monopoly called familiarly ‘The Company’. It now owned 2,000 horses, 233 tramcars and twenty-four omnibuses. Appalling working conditions and poor wages persuaded Glasgow Corporation to take over the running of those early trams.
The Corporation ran their first tram service on 1 July 1894. Quite incredibly, within a year there were 250 trams on the road. By 1956, there were 1,966 trams and buses on our streets. There were 661,339,964 passenger journeys with an income of £9 million pounds. By the way, The Company continued for a while to run their own competing omnibus service, but eventually conceded defeat.
The early trams were open topped and open fronted vehicles but they soon endeared themselves to the travelling public, particularly as they seemed to go everywhere you wanted and it was so easy to jump off and get another connecting service. I did this myself when I would take a tram from Anderston to Glasgow Cross and transfer to the new trolleybus to get to my granny in the Garngad.
Over time the trams were to improve greatly. Roofs were added to the double decker cars and the driving cabs were glassed in with added panels and then permanently on the new four wheeled double decker ‘Standard car’ of which 1000 were built between 1898 and 1924.
While many of the Standard cars lasted well into the 1950s, In the 1930s, as the Standard was looking very tired, and some cities were abandoning their tram routes, the Corporation took the bold step of designing two new prototypes. A stimulus to this was the need for new transport for visitors to the Empire Exhibition in Bellahouston Park in 1938. With an eye to the new streamlined age, the new trams had superior interiors and, as they were introduced during the year of the Coronation of King George VI, they became known as Coronation Cars. Between 1948 and 1952, the Coronation Mark II emerged. 100 of these, with more rounded cabs, were built and with an acknowledgement to the launch of the Cunard RMS Queen Mary in Glasgow in 1936, they became known as ‘Cunarders’.
Glasgow’s electric trams had a long and a proud history seeing a variety of new and experimental models. Trams first began to be phased out in 1949 and as trolleybuses and diesel buses entered service there were further reductions, with the final trams running in September 1962.
Such was the sentimental attachment to the ‘caurs’ that, on a wet day, 250,000 people lined a route from Dalmarnock Road to Albert Drive via the city centre to watch a procession of twenty of the city’s historic and modern trams. I was one of those laying a penny on the rails to have it flattened as a ‘caur’ went over it. What memories! If you visit Glasgow’s wonderful Riverside Museum you will see fine examples of Glasgow’s old trams. The Museum of Scottish Industrial Life at Summerlee in Coatbridge also has a Glasgow single-decker tram that was originally part of the Paisley fleet.
Glasgow: A Transport History by Michael Meighan is available for purchase now.