MIDLANDS & SOUTHERN ENGLAND: Regional Tramways

It was not until the Tramways Act of 1870 that a legal framework existed to permit the construction of street tramways. The American entrepreneur George Francis Train discovered this during the early 1860s when he endeavoured to build a number of street tramways in England. The Act imposed a duty upon the operator to maintain the strip of road 18" either side of the outer running rails at a time when roads were badly maintained in general, and at the end of the 21 year lease the local authority was entitled to purchase the assets of the company at a written-down value. The 1870 Act was subsequently amended, most notably with the Light Railways Act of 1860. The Portsmouth Street Tramways Company was formed by lines constructed by four different companies and the Plymouth Corporation employed 54 horse trams. There is a marvellous picture of number two pictured at St Jude's Church. Leicester, Wantage, Yarmouth and Gorleston, Bristol, Derby, Nottingham, Ipswich, Southampton, Norwich and Coventry, Gloucester, Grimsby, Exeter, Lincoln, Brighton, the Canvey Island Monorail, here are also some steam trains and a four-wheel petrol driven Simplex-type locomotive built by the Kent Construction Company in 1924, the open balcony cars supplied by Brush on Peckham P22 trucks during 1913 and 1914 among the hundreds of rare vintage images in this collection. There are maps and a key to abbreviations and the books is organised by the following chapters: Birmingham, Grimsby & Immingham, Leicester, Midland Metro, Nottingham Express Transit, Plymouth, Seaton, Southampton and lastly Preservation. The extensive volume covers all the post war systems from their inception through to closure with a superb range of images from horse drawn trams to the end. Colour, 168 very large glossy pages.