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End of Sheffield Tramcars souvenir booklet...1960


lysander

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A few snippets from this rather well thumbed souvenir I have. The first tram ran in October 1873. In 1896 the system was taken over by Sheffield Corporation who, shortly afterward began electrifying the system with the first electrified line, between High St. and Weedon St,. starting  services in 1899...At the same time the familiar colours of blue and cream were agreed upon. At the takeover the system consisted of 44 tramcars, 3 omnibuses, 310 horses, 9 miles of track and 182 employees. At its maximum in 1943-48 the Corporation system had 468 trams with the busiest routes having a service every two(2) minutes!. In 1940 a fleet of 444 trams ran 13,946,546 miles and raised an income of £901,722 . The last trams ran on 8th October 1960 between Millhouses/Beauchief and Vulcan Road.

The death knell of the old system was indicated as early as 1947 when the Town Planning Committee proposed, " That the Council be recommended to approve the abandonment of trams at surface level in the Central Area as soon as the course becomes possible."

The population was moving out to the suburbs, buses were more useful, not being restricted to track work (but were next to useless in snow, on hills especially) car ownership was increasing and trams had become outmoded...well, for a half century.

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My parents used to have a copy of that booklet which I remember them buying in 1960. I can almost picture every page, I browsed through it so many times. I went to watch the last tram, standing on Coles Corner, and for a while had a ha'penny that I'd squashed under its wheels.

Picture from: https://www.chrishobbs.com/sheffield/colescorner.htm

colescornerart.jpg

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