Rotherham Trams In Sheffield

[Guest jih]

Does anyone remember the unique single-ended trams that Rotherham Transport used to fulfil their part of the through service to Sheffield which ended on 11 December 1948? I believe Rotherham supplied a third of the cars required. I would have been about 5 when my father took me with our next door neighbour and his son for a trip to Rotherham one Saturday afternoon. Even so I remember it vividly and that rather than boarding at our normal stop, the first after Middlewood terminus, at the foot of Darwin Road, we walked to the terminus to board one of the Saturday lunch time extras from the East End, probably from Vulcan Road or Templeborough, returning to Tinsley Depot. Alas I cannot remember the number but I do recollect that it was one of the elderly rocker panel cars. We alighted at Tinsley and the tram ran into the Depot. The first Rotherham bound car was a Sheffield standard similar to 189 at Crich and in the same earlier livery. We waited in Rotherham for one of the Rotherham single-ended cars and returned all the way to Exchange Street on it. I remember that part but cannot remember what happened then, presumably we walked to the bottom of Snig Hill. I do remember though that there were a lot of extra cars run on a Saturday and that some terminated in Bridge Street rather than Angel Street and that when one of these cars reversed and came back going to Middlewood everybody waiting at the tram stop flooded across Snig Hill to the top of Bridge Street to get on! How times change.

[lysander]

There is a picture of a Rotherham tram on its way through the Wicker Arches in a book entitled" Sheffield: Armourer to the British Empire" published a while ago by Wharncliffe Publishing.

[madannie77]

One of the single ended cars in Tinsley

http://www.sheffieldhistory.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic/706-tram-location/?p=73973