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The love affair of the century? Glesga and its tramcars.
If you spoke about 'the caurs' before the 1960's it wasn't about
motor cars being referred to, it was tramcars. The shooglie caurs!
They clanged, shoogled, lurched, swayed and shuddered...ah wis once thrown
fae the relatively safety of the inside of a tramcar, standing beside ma granny, to suddenly
finding maself writhing oan the platform being grabbed by an ever
watchful conductress and pulled tae
safety....a wisnae hoddin oan tae the seat handles ye see, ah wis trying tae be
gallus! They blew no smoke, gushed no effluent, spilled no oil.....and we all
loved them!
Glaswegians adored them as was demonstrated that sad day in 1962 when we
finally said goodbye to our beloved trams........almost a quarter of a million turned out that
day to attend the 'funeral' of our dear friends....and many were in tears.
Around the 1820s and 1830s the first form of public transport began
appearing with the use of horse-drawn coaches for hire, owned by striving entrepreneurs, two of the
most famous being Robert Frame and Andrew Menzies. In 1894 the Glasgow Corporation opted to
take over Menzie's company who were carrying 54 million passengers a year and owned 3,500
horses!
Acquiring the tramway service, to be titled Glasgow Corporation Tramways
made Glasgow the first authority in Britain to own and operate its own public transport
system on 1st July 1894....Another first for Glesga!
.Over 6 million passengers were carried in the first four weeks. By 1902
the changeover to electricity was complete - conductresses -
"Clippies" were introduced during the 1st World War. Glasgow was
the first city to do so and Tartan was seen again, this time in their long
uniform skirt. |
