Modern super-luxury tramcars : built at the Dick, Kerr Works, Preston : brochure : The English Electric Company Ltd. : Preston, Lancashire : nd [c.1935] : cover

A rather fine trade brochure issued by English Electric showing the modern tramcars constructed for a handful of operators at their Dick, Kerr Works in Preston, Lancashire. These works had a long pedigree in the construction of British tramcars; they came to English Electric when the company was formed in 1919 by merger that included Dick, Kerr & Co. They had their origins in Glasgow in 1854 and had important engineering works in Kilmarnock acquiring the Preston works in 1893. The company did well out of the trend towards municipalisation and electrification of earlier horse and steam tramway systems.

 

By the mid-1930s British tramway systems were mostly in decline as first generation electric networks were in need of significant investment at a time when the motor bus was an established competitor that was seen as having more flexibility along with smaller capital outlays. In addition, with the growth of road traffic, the British Government had spoken out against trams on the perceived grounds of congestion and safety.

 

Nevertheless a few operators experimented with modernising their systems and tramcar fleets. Some of the operators here undertook such work rather partially, such as Sunderland and Rotherham, and the new trams added to the fleet sadly were unable to turn the tide towards abandonment. Belfast, seen here, were effectively on the cusp of converting their system to trolleybus operation, a programme that began in 1938 and doomed the tramways.

 

Edinburgh's examples were the harbingers of a large fleet of new 'standard' cars that the Corporation constructed themselves with designs drawing from the cars purchased from outside contractors such as EE. The system survived intact into the 1950s when the seemingly inevitable decision was made to abandon the system and replace trams with buses that concluded in 1956.

 

Other systems seen here, Leeds and Blackpool, were also amongst undertakings that made determined efforts to modernise their fleets and network; in the case of the former, Leeds remained relatively faithful to trams until the decision was made in the mid-1950s to abandon by 1959 and in the case of the latter Blackpool, the great Lancashire seaside resort, was to end up being the UK's last street tramway operator. These EE products, along with later cars constructed in the 1950s, enabled the trams to keep running in the resort until finally modernisation into a more 'light mass transit system' took place in the 2000's.

 

English Electric have chosen a distinctly contemporary and moderne design for the brochure here using the popular '30s deco 'streamlined' design to sell a story of modernity and technological advance. This was a real attempt to promote a new look for the increasingly derided 'old fashioned' and seemingly 'uncomfortable' tramcar that was common at the time. The cover is unashamedly based on one of Blackpool's fleet as supplied by EE.

Done