European Railroad Discussion > Last tram tracks in London?

Is this the last remaining example of tram tracks in Central London?
This is the northern entrance to the former Kingsway tram tunnel at Holborn. Note the central groove for the "plough" electric pickup!

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Although I can't prove it off the top of my head I seem to recall mention of some in the forecourt of what is now Fulwell Bus Garage, which had been a tram depot in the first 30 or so years of the 20th century.

From Wiki:

After the slow start, electric trams rapidly became very popular; by 1903, there were 300 electric tramcars in London, which carried 800,000 passengers over Whitsun weekend in 1903. The London County Council Tramways first electric line opened in May 1903 between Westminster Bridge and Tooting and the LCC sold 3.3 million tickets in its third year of business or five times the traffic carried by its horse trams. The LCC saw the electric trams as a way of driving social change, as its cheap, fast service could encourage workers to move out of the crowded inner city and live healthier lives in the suburbs.[5] Although the City of London and the West End of London never gave permission for tram lines to be built, soon other London boroughs introduced their own electric services, including West Ham, Leyton, Dartford and Bexley.

By 1914, the London tram operators formed the largest tram network in Europe[5] but the onset of the Great War saw a halt in the expansion of the trams and thousands of staff left to join the armed forces to be replaced by "substitute" women conductors and drivers.

Several different companies and municipalities operated London's electric tramways. The largest was the LCC, with lines equipped with an unusual form of electricity supply via an underground conduit located between the running rails. Other operators mainly used the more conventional overhead electric wires. Many of London's trams had to be equipped with both systems of electricity supply, with routes being equipped with change points.


During their heyday, tram services covered much of inner London and reached out to the suburbs, assisted by facilities like the Kingsway tramway subway, which enabled the longest tram route entirely within the County of London to operate: a weekend service between Archway, then part of Highgate, and Downham via Brockley, 16 miles (26 kilometres) .

Route coverage might have been wider still but the terms of the 1870 Act meant that the passage of new tramways had to be negotiated individually with local authorities, who would sometimes impose prohibitively expensive improvement works as a condition of approval.[13]

After the Great War, money for investment and maintenance became harder to find, as passengers migrated to the new motor bus services. In the 1930s, The London United and Metropolitan Electric companies purchased a large fleet of modern double-deck Feltham trams, built by the Union Construction Company at Feltham. LUT accompanied this change by introducing electric trolleybuses using twin overhead wires as a cheaper alternative for 17 miles (27 kilometres) of its routes in 1931.

A Royal Commission on Transport, held between 1928 and 1931, ensured that the tram companies retained complete responsibility for the maintenance of its rails and highway, which was shared with other road users who contributed its wear. But this was accompanied by Parliamentary bills in 1930 and 1933 that set up the London Passenger Transport Board to operate the LCC's existing bus and underground train service and to purchase and manage all of London's tramways. Under the LPTB, there was no new investment in tram services and the maintenance of services became a hot political issue in elections in South London, an area poorly served by Underground trains.[14] The merged tram services were held back from introducing new, quieter and more comfortable track and vehicles, in favour of trolleybus services and tubes provided under the New Works Programme. Although the trams returned gross annual revenues of £850,000 (equivalent to £48,464,250 in 2015),[15], the net surplus was £128,000 (equivalent to £7,298,146 in 2015),[15] after costs were taken by the LCC, partly to repay the debt of £18m resulting from the merger.[16]

Abandonment[edit]
At this time, trams were starting to be considered out-dated and inflexible and the phasing out and replacement by diesel buses or trolleybuses started in earnest around 1935, when a large proportion of the trams and of the tracks and ancillary equipment were nearing the end of their useful life. Replacement continued until hostilities stopped the conversion programme in June 1940, leaving only the South London trams and the routes that went through the Kingsway subway into North London. After World War II, shortages of steel and electrical machinery were cited as reasons for not investing in maintenance, while the LCC reported that the service ran at a loss. The market for trams became smaller as other tramways were being forced to close at that time, as the 1948 nationalisation of electricity suppliers removed access to cheap electricity for those undertakings which owned their local power company.[17]

A.B.B. Valentine, one of the five full-time members of the London Transport Executive, saw trams as a major cause of road congestion, which would be relieved by the introduction of buses, with the aesthetic benefit of doing away with overhead wires and their noisy operation.[18] A report in The Economist in 1952 suggested a more comprehensive list of reasons for their demise, including:

the 1870 Tramways Act, which placed a great financial burden on the operator for road maintenance even though it was not responsible for all the wear[19]
London had streets that were too narrow, unlike continental cities.
London's housing developments were too far away from tram routes
authorities were prejudiced against trams
The capital cost of replacing and updating the worn out infrastructure and trams was also seen as prohibitive when compared with the £9 m capital cost of buying buses with a slightly smaller carrying capacity.[18]

"Operation Tramaway", the replacement of the tram service by diesel buses, was announced in July 1950 by Lord Latham of the London Transport Executive. Retirement started in October 1950 and London's last trams ran in the early hours of 6 July 1952 to a rousing reception at New Cross Depot.[20]

No general improvement in traffic flow was seen after the trams were withdrawn.[18]