FIG. 19. FAÇADE OF QUEEN’S ROAD CAR-SHED, MANCHESTER CORPORATION TRAMWAYS
By permission of the Manchester Corporation Tramways.
The cars are of the British Thomson-Houston Company type, double-motored, and are fine examples of elegance and solidity combined, and fitted with all the latest improvements for the comfort of travellers.
THE BIRMINGHAM TRAMWAYS
Birmingham, as regards tramways, stands in a peculiar position. Its city area is restricted; it has only short lengths of tram lines, and these require to be linked up with outlying districts. The lines were leased to the City of Birmingham Tramways Company, but whether the Corporation will or will not take them over now, has not yet been decided. However, by a majority of fourteen votes it has sanctioned the substitution of electricity on the overhead method, and this is being proceeded with; and when the transformation is complete Birmingham and district will have an electric tramway system of nearly a hundred and ten miles. Its tramways have always been popular, and at a charge of a penny for a three-mile ride—a record for cheapness—56,000 passengers made use of them on Mafeking Day, no small proportion of a city of 522,182 inhabitants!
Before quitting the subject of tramways, it will be interesting to note the fares charged in different parts of the world. In London they begin at a halfpenny. On the Continent they vary; for example, in Berlin the fare is 1¼d. for two miles, and a halfpenny for each additional mile; in Paris it is 3d. inside, with transfer ticket, and 1½d. on the platforms, or outside the car; in St. Petersburg 1¼d. and 1½d. is the fare; in Stockholm it is the curious sum of 1⅜d.; in Florence it is 1d. from the suburbs to the city, and 1½d. across the city; in Cape Town it is 3d. for three miles; and in Canada the fare averages 2½d., and 5d. after midnight.
PROVINCIAL RURAL TRAMWAYS
The memorable question once put to the House of Commons, “What is a pound?” to this day has not met with a strictly accurate reply. The same may be said of the frequent inquiry, “What constitutes a Light Railway?”
Under the Act of 1896 a Tube should officially be described as a Light Railway. So should a Shallow Underground, an Urban Tramway, and a Rural Tramway. So, too, should a Brighton Beach Line, or any short train running along a pier. So also should any railway line for the carrying of minerals, worked by heavy sixty-ton locomotives, and hauling five or six hundred tons of ore at a time! Reductio ad absurdum.