Trams: Is There Much Tramway Interest On Here??

Tram number 49 at the Black Country Living Museum, Dudley, taken 20.2.2010. This Wolverhampton Corporation double decker was built in 1909 by United Electric Car Company, Preston, originally equipped with the Lorain system - taking its power supply from studs in the road - it was later converted to run from overhead wires. It was withdrawn from service in 1921. The tram was painstakingly restored by the Black Country Museum Transport Group in 200

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David
 
I bought a book about East Anglian trams - probably from a second hand shop - and it surprised me how short a life-span the majority of tram systems had - a bit like the canals really :think::think:
 
Rhinochugger said:
I bought a book about East Anglian trams - probably from a second hand shop - and it surprised me how short a life-span the majority of tram systems had - a bit like the canals really :think::think:
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Many of them died because the original acts to create them ceded them to a Local Council after x years. This being so the private company did not give that much maintenance towards the end of x and thus a decrepit system was inherited by whatever Council. They continued the lack of investment and also reduced the Rates on the profits still being made till there came a time when the only option was to shut shop. Some systems of course never fitted this scenario and went on to prosper only being closed by Councils because they were seen as old fashioned.

Blackpool survived as the only one in the U.K. but the management of that system are so inept that they have recently put up new signs on the Stops without a proper map of the system, thus tourists (remember them Blackpool they are what keeps the economy going) have to ask which way for their stop often missing the Tram they need because they are on the wrong side of the line. You could not make this up!
 
dunnyrail said:
Many of them died because the original acts to create them ceded them to a Local Council after x years. This being so the private company did not give that much maintenance towards the end of x and thus a decrepit system was inherited by whatever Council. They continued the lack of investment and also reduced the Rates on the profits still being made till there came a time when the only option was to shut shop. Some systems of course never fitted this scenario and went on to prosper only being closed by Councils because they were seen as old fashioned.

Blackpool survived as the only one in the U.K. but the management of that system are so inept that they have recently put up new signs on the Stops without a proper map of the system, thus tourists (remember them Blackpool they are what keeps the economy going) have to ask which way for their stop often missing the Tram they need because they are on the wrong side of the line. You could not make this up!
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Yeah, it's a bit like the TFL signs on the tube. Some Richard Cranium in some government department obviously decided that people always read signs as text, i.e top to bottom. So now, irrespective of whether you are travelling north to south or south to north, the stations always read downwards from your current location - barking :swear: Mind you, Barking is on an east / west line :devil::devil:

This reached ultimate idiocy when I worked for Hammersmith & Fulham Council and the signs in the stairways were changed (to suit the d*** h***'s edicts) and so the Ground floor was at the top of the list, all the way down to the Third Floor at the bottom of the list.

The lunatics are, indeed, running the asylum.
 
I have heard that the Black Country Museum Group is suffering a decline in the number of volunteers.
 
I don't know where to post it. About a week ago, Wuppertaler Stadtwerke AG posted information on wearing protective masks on buses and trains. They used a photo montage with a suspension railway. As of today there has been a real train with a mask. It is a foil sticker. When I saw her for the first time today, I had to laugh again after a long time. I'll show you both versions.
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This is the photo montage, from about a week ago.

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And this is the real thing, Schwebebahn car Number 29, with its mask.
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Peter
 
Paul M said:
Funniest thing to come out of Germany since Herr Wehn. Makes me want to visit Wuppertal even more now.
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You will not regret it, the Schwebebahn is a well worth it trip. There is also a similar thing in I think a College that you can travel on as well, I expect that Peter may remind me where it is. Not that long a trip from Wupoertal plus there are also Trams in the Town that it is located. I think we actually got to it by Tram when we went.
 
I must look-up some more about this..
The amount of 'ironmongery' required to keep it in the air (I am sure it is a little over-engineered) is mind-boggling! o_O
 
dunnyrail said:
You will not regret it, the Schwebebahn is a well worth it trip. There is also a similar thing in I think a College that you can travel on as well...
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You are right, that one is called H-Bahn and it is located at the campus of the technical university in Dortmund. It has two lines. And one terminal is not far away a tram stop. But also a simular thing is the H-Bahn at Düsseldorf airport. Bring you from the airport to the parking spaces and a train stations. Both services are connected in the VRR, so you can use it with a normal ticket, better a day ticket, Both are about 25-30 km away, round about 18 -20 miles.
H-bahn Dortmund official site

Skytrain or people mover Düsseldorf
Peter
 
dunnyrail said:
You will not regret it, the Schwebebahn is a well worth it trip. There is also a similar thing in I think a College that you can travel on as well, I expect that Peter may remind me where it is. Not that long a trip from Wupoertal plus there are also Trams in the Town that it is located. I think we actually got to it by Tram when we went.
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We went through Wuppertal on the train from Berlin to Cologne the other year, it looked fascinating and I said to the wife we'll have to go back one day for a ride. She wasn't too keen though, but I'm sure we'll get there one day. Was it used for goods at all? It looked like it went to a quarry or something
 
Paul M said:
We went through Wuppertal on the train from Berlin to Cologne the other year, it looked fascinating and I said to the wife we'll have to go back one day for a ride. She wasn't too keen though, but I'm sure we'll get there one day. Was it used for goods at all? It looked like it went to a quarry or something
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Peter will have to answer that one.
 
@ dunnyrail.
The idea was born in Cologne. The sugar manufacturer Eugen Langen wanted to make his workers' work easier. He built a load suspension railway. This idea became the Wuppertal suspension railway.
He offered his idea to big cities like Hamburg, Berlin. Paris and London. Only Wuppertal accepted the offer. This is how we have had the suspension railway since March 1901. They only transported passengers in Wuppertal. Loads are only used for test purposes. That is 20 kg of iron weights, which are supposed to simulate the weight of passengers.

Peter
 
Tricky to know if this is the correct place to post this, but as there have been bits on the Wuppertal in here before appeared appropriate. Created by Denis Shiryaev’s from Gdańsk Poland this IMHO is a marvel of the modern computing age. There is a tantalising view of the W’s overhead and one Tram from the long since closed (mostly?) Tram System that followed the SB in places. One wonders seeing all of the empty land and lack of people how the SB ever got built, but it was and is now considered to be one of the Transport wonders of the world.

The process that created and colourised this is not without controversy as the following extract shows:-

“That’s not a view many academics hold, however. Luke McKernan, lead curator of news and moving images at the British Library, was particularly scathing about Peter Jackson’s 2018 World War One documentary They Shall Not Grow Old, which upscaled and colourised footage from the Western Front. Making the footage look more modern, he argued, undermined it. “It is a nonsense,” he wrote. “Colourisation does not bring us closer to the past; it increases the gap between now and then. It does not enable immediacy; it creates difference.””

IMHO this Luke guy is an idiot, but that is just me, I have the ‘They shall not grow old’ Vid and it gave me a view on WW1 that I never had before, but I guess we must all make up our own minds about these things, certainly not to take on the views of so called Academics who “must be right” because they are Acedemics.

So I leave you with the Vid, I certainly hope that you enjoy it as much as I did, if not well you are not forced to watch it all are you?


 
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H'mm - the same year as colour film was first developed (no pun intended on the developed). I can't see that colourisation of the film denigrates it but I would agree that the subject of the Western Front original films being altered is controversial (like changing history).
 
Great film, the colour does give it a surreal quality as films of this age are normally black and white, but a very interesting and useful source of inspiration. It seemed very empty, not that many people around, and very tidy, no obvious litter.:clap::clap:
 
I can't see how colourisation does anything but enhance the experience. I am lucky enough to have travelled on the Schwebe Bahn and I still think it is a technological marvel. It is remarkable how peaceful things seem to be in Wuppertal as the train glides overhead.
 
Ever since I saw the iconic photo of the line over the river, on the front of my brother's Mechano Magazine as a nipper, I have been fascinated by this line - but I have never traveled to Germany; dunno why :wondering::wondering:
 
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