Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Leeds trams in the late 1950s

1 comment:

dreamingspire said...

Thanks for that. Brings back memories, as we lived at Gledhow 55-57 - but we only had buses up there, and I remember us kids helping push them when they got stuck in the snow. Sometimes the trams also had trouble with the snow, of course. What I had not remembered was the colour of the trams, but did remember the buses being green. (That film seems to be running a little fast in the vid.)
Today we have missed a trick with trams, and the Germans are ahead of us. With today's mix of comms cables under and near the road in town and city central areas, a tram that returns its supply current through the rails needs to have an insulating layer laid down below the rails to stop the current affecting other services - a very expensive job. The Germans have developed hybrid trams, with battery and small diesel engine as well as the trolley for overhead wires. So in central areas the overhead wires are not needed. Liverpool's new tram project might have gone ahead if they had planned to use hybrids (it also might have gone ahead if they had been careful to wait until the project was approved before spending).