The problem with trams is that they are fixed to set routes whilst motor buses are fre to go wherever there are suitable roads. The problem with rural railways was the stations were often a good walk from the village they served meaning that when buses came along they lost passengers (even in the pre-grouping days stations that didn't earn enough got chopped, Beeching only accelerated the pruning). And when the cheap motor car came along the public voted with their feet and bought cars making the railways redundant. Society though that the ease of movement that their own car represented was more important than a railway, tram or bus service. It takes a generation or more to see the damage done by a decision like this. So I wonder what our children and grandchildren will be criticising us for doing that seemed so full of promise when we made it?
@@neiloflongbeck5705 Some people, even today, might criticise privatisation, not just of the railways but also the electricity, gas and water networks. It seems that many people thought that privatisation would reduce costs for consumers instead it seems that the opposite may be true.
so much info packed into a small episode... i loved it all the same... especialy the added background sounds of the horses and trams whilst you were on the move
I thoroughly enjoyed that video. I grew up in Cambridge many years ago and had always heard of the horse drawn trams, but never knew much about them. It was a treat to see photos of the city old and new. Thank you.
Brilliant, I said it would be and you must have been up very early even on a bank holiday to film an empty Lensfield road! If you're interested there is a replica section of Cambridge tramway at the Cambridge museum of technology, Riverside, Cambridge (The former Chedders La. pumping Station) the other interesting point is the tramway didn't use what I will term standard bull head rail section, they used a T section, almost I section, on the top flange there is a groove for the wheel flange to run in. The area between the rails and an area on each side were wood blocks, as far as I have been led to believe made from Canadian redwood, about the rough size of a house brick. Now for a bit of trivia, when Cambridge allowed the operation of a sight seeing bus to operate in the city, around 1990's (?) an argument against it was that passengers would be able to see into student accommodation, the same cry used when they were planning the tramway 100 years earlier! Thank you so much for your time to make this interesting film. Rgds. Peter
Really glad you enjoyed it - to my shame I've never visited that museum and I' only round the corner. Thank you for the facts and information as well as the trivia - much appreciated!
I believe there was an resistance, from the University, for the horse tram system to be converted to an electric traction system. It's was also the same story in Oxford. Who only ever had horse trams which never develope into an electric system. A common belief at the time, by the well to do class. Trams would help the poorer classes access their exclusive high class areas. Thanks for a great tram story, I hope you can do more.
I went to a talk about Blackpool trams. St. Anne's on sea was a "Posh' resort. The town council refused Blackpool trams through running into their system. Because would make it far too easy for the "Rif-raf" to travel there. So, trams meet at the boundary to exchange passengers. Just been studying my home systems Leeds, footfall for buses and trams form 1938 to 1966. Any city would love to have 250 million journeys a year in 1950 (105M buses and 148M trams). Three years later the council announced the closure of the tram system. A system with the most off road running, than any other city. Some new housing estates had brand new track built as late as 1948. Plans for an underground had already started, before the war.
The posh still reject public transport to keep out us poors. The residents of Chelsea are dead set against a Crossrail 2 station on Kings Road even though the area is chronically underserved by public transport.
You haven't mentioned one of the distinctive features of the Cambridge horse trams, which was that they operated on the 4 foot gauge, rather than the standard 4ft 8 1/2 inch one. This is now very rare (I think it's only found on the Glasgow Underground in the UK) but it was at one time used by quite a lot of tram systems, especially in East Lancashire. It offered the benefit that other horse drawn vehicles didn't try to take advantage of the tracks as their wheels were spaced wider apart.
A fascinating video. Wonderful history lesson which you obviously researched thouroughly. I guess not many people who travel the routes today know much about the history right under their feet. I think your excellent film will change all that. Thanks again for all the hard work you put into the making of your videos. Can't wait for the next one.
Excellent video - thank you. As a resident of a village close to Haverhill, I lament the closure in the '60s of the railways in the area: so incredibly short-sighted. It amazes me that despite the building of logistics units and much new housing in Haverhill, the only means of transport westwards towards the A11 and Cambridge is the A1307 - a poorly laid-out and regularly lethal road.
I worked on Kings Parade in the 1990’s. The council dug up the road to lay setts for the new loading bays and disabled parking. Under the tarmac they discovered the tram tracks and wooden blocks that made up the surface. Sadly I think it was all sent to landfill…
An very interesting and well made film. I think a tram system along the lines (!) of my local and highly successful Croydon system would be of huge benefit to serve Cambridge and the surrounding towns and villages
Agreed - I think that some kind of metro system would offer a variety of benefits, but, alas, I suspect no one wants to pay! Thanks for your kind remarks about my film.
It should follow Oxford, and charge drivers to enter the centre of the city. Think it's up to £10 a day there now. Not as much as London, but still cities like Cambridge, Oxford, Bath, and York are tourist magnets and jam packed with tourists in the summer months. Air quality is becoming as serious an issue in these four smaller cities as it is in large cities like London, and Birmingham.
And in Cambridge, there isn't. If you live in nearby villages, you're already looking to other towns and cities for shopping due to the cost of going into Cambridge.
And a way to hollow out the centre. What we fail to understand and some people can't grasp is that cars are going no where. It's a fantasy too think people are just hanging out to give you their vehicles. They're not and they will cut back on eating out before cutting back on the car. And fees like that just hand over business to other towns etc. Cambridge has nothing in the centre that you won't get elsewhere. So what you need to do is create a public transport system utilising several modes. I honestly cannot see what use wrong with old park and rides. They work perfectly.
Wow, what a discovery! I was there for 6 years and lived in Lensfield Road opposite the chemistry building for a couple of years, walked up and down Regent Street but never knew about trams. But I had a ride on the local tram last evening in Hong Kong where it's been running for over a century.😊
Very interesting video. I wasn't aware that there had been horse trams in Cambridge. I have visited Cambridge many times, by car for the Corn Exchange Theatre, which was the nearest theatre to us where Runrig have performed and also by train for Addenbrookes. It one of the most car hating cities that I have visited (speed traps everywhere amongst other things to annoy drivers), but I think the chances of a decent Metro are remote. Despite having all the scientific expertise on their doorstep, the council would only make a hash of it, like they did with the guided busway.
Hi , It's always good to see yesterday, and what it was like, I wish we could go back to them days , not much pollution, (just mind were you put your feet) All the Best Brian 🤗😎
Great video. Wonderfully narrated and edited as usual! 😁👍❤️ It certainly seams that a re-installed tram or new electric busway is in order, but as you said time will tell.
Thank you for your kind words about my film - I think some form of metro system may well be useful, but, alas, I think the money will not be forthcoming...!
A horse-drawn tram system would, I think, be an enormous failure in a modern city environment. For the conveyance of fare paying passengers, the lack of speed might be a severe inconvenience. And the City Fathers might look most unfavourably upon the invariable plethora of ‘horse-muck’ littering the roadway. I also, had to look up Hobson’s Conduit. Another fascinating video show.
Thanks for that interesting video, I never knew Cambridge once had trams! Well I do now! Another well researched and put together piece of work, thankyou.👍
@@RediscoveringLostRailways It could, but it's not cheap. It has the advantage of being faster than surface/street, but inevitably means few stops and less direct connectivity with businesses on the surface
I probably would see that Cambridge might need trams but it does have a guided busway which could extend from Cambridge to Huntingdon, Newmarket, Bedford and Peterborough. Taking over some of the former and closed railway lines.
Very interesting - and a nice 'deviation'. I spent a few days driving around Cambridge last summer - only my second visit - and was rather disappointed with the messy combination of buses, guided buses, student buses, etc. We had originally planned to drive only there and back, using public transport whilst there, but I'm afraid we ended up going everywhere by car. If ever there were a city crying out for a modern tramway systen, this would seem to be it, but I guess the cost only would put paid to any such plan. I'm no expert, buy my theory is that modern tram systems only really work where an area already has a lot of abandonded or under-used railway lines, which can be incorporated into a tram system relatively easily - and which provide high speed travel from the suburbs into the city centre (e.g. the Croydon system). The actual 'tram' part of these systems (the most expensive part to build?) tends to be only a small section in the middle of the city. The same is probably also true of metro systems like Newcastle's - essentially the same thing.
Thank you for your comments, kind words and assessment - with which I agree - I think 'retrofitting' a tram system to the centre of Cambridge would be very costly and risk causing more problems than it would solve...
Cambridge has no shortage of old railways: the varsity line and Huntington line are now guided busway (which should have been a tram from the start), then there's the stour valley line which could serve Linton and Haverhill again, and the line to Mildenhall through Bottisham
I was very much surprised to see my hometown on that proposed CAM map, having not heard of the proposal before. The road between there and Cambridge is a traffic nightmare (especially during commuter times), buses take a very round-about route and the busway passes nowhere near the town; since East West Rail will most likely pass too far south to be viable for daily commuters, I feel like a tram network would've been a good solution to the traffic and environmental concerns.
Dear Lost Railways, When I used to live in Gt. Wilbraham many years ago, near to the junction of the current A11 there was a filled in railway cutting running parallel with the A11 heading south on the western side of the A11, past the Fulbourn/Balsham Rd. Charter bridge junction. On the old A11 near Abington on the Eastern side of the A11, close to the entrance to Granta busines Park there is what looks like a crossing keepers house, Question, do you know where this line went or any of its history? Unfortunately I don't have a detailed Ordnance Survey map which might show it. Regards, Peter.
Thanks for your message. I think you are describing the Newmarket and Chesterford railway which was a very early closure indeed, shutting as it did in the 1850s. I strongly recommend a website called RailMapOnline which details the route of all UK railways past and present. I hope that's helpful 😌
@@RediscoveringLostRailways That would be about right I seem to think there was an alignment down a bridalway the other side of the village. Many thanks for your time to reply.
Thank you for another great video. Working at the train station I would have loved to have seen those pods scooting around the city. It would have also been great to see a possibility of the CAM going out to Mildenhall and Haverhill and re linking these towns back to Cambridge.
Whilst I am not surprised that the CAM did not bear fruit, I think it was a very interesting idea and enjoyed the ambition of the scheme - it would certainly have been good to connect the city directly with these former railway towns!
Eh, they seemed more like glorified taxis. Cambridge really needs a proper steel-wheeled tram line. Though even without that, the city is small enough that just putting segregated bike lanes on all major roads would likely be enough to make getting around the city a breeze
What's the difference between a city congested with pods and a city congested with cars? Just because you don't own them, doesn't make them good public transport
Much that I love the Douglas horse tram in Isle of Man, I'm afraid that they are outdated. I have been in many cities and think the Manchester tram system is brilliant. A few years ago we went on the tram from the city centre to the East Lancs Railway, what a great journey. The Glasgow Trams were shut down in 1962 so I was too young to remember them, another great system. Another interesting, well researched video, another winner!
Those proposed but cancelled projects at the end were nothing more than gadgetbahns designed to woo councils that they were making 'green wonderful' decisions while feathering developers pockets. You could use a quarter of that on a simple bus with bus lanes.
Good informative as ever. As the tram system was never mechanised it was always an early candidate to be killed off by buses but it ran on rails so even now would be better than that grotty guided bus obscenity.
it's ashame trams were taken out of service they were cleaner quieter bit like the trolley buses in the 50 and early 60s we in thanet had trams which ran all over thanet we had tram sheds at st peters broadstairs still there today now shops and at Westbrook nr margate sadly demolished a few years ago
Rail based transport has a problem with flexibility. If the traffic pattern changes it requires major rebuilding efforts or make the use of the system inconviniet and time consuming. Public transport works best in shuttling large groups of person that all go to one place at one time. Say factory workers of a large factory from the workers housing district to the company and back. Works less well in modern times with more liberal work hours and smaller/more distributed work places. Electric busses with overline wires require a bit less work but the power network and the wire infrastructure needs to be build. And until recently combined buses that could also run independent of the overhead power lines where typically diesel as backup due to the weight/power ratio of lead-acid batteries. Diesel in start stop operation are not the best choice. These days some new options are there but initial investment is high due to low demand. And that is all "within one city". Add a tendency for suburb live and work in city a, live in city b and you add to the problem
Sydney Australia is spending AUD$10.6 billion on a 24 kilometre tram following existing roads and heavy rail route. Really? $441,666 .67 per metre? Less than a foot step and it costs that per foot step?
Look at Ghent. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-sEOA_Tcq2XA.html Cambridge’s population is around 129,000, Ghent’s population is around 260,300
Cambridge is no different than any major metropolitan city here in the United States, scrapping the steel-wheel-on-steel-rail mass transportation system in favor of the "modern", oft-times-individual, conveyances with their rubber tires rolling on macadam. The city may have done it sooner than most, but the end result is still the same. Also, I don't buy that "no viable means could be found (for electrifying the system)" nonsense: where there's a will, there's a way. That Cambridge Autonomous Metro sounds akin to Boston, Massachusetts' "Big Dig" subterranean highway project. Not only did that latter boondoggle dig deep into the ground under the city but so too into the private-sector taxpayers' pockets with its massive cost overruns. Of course, one deadline after another for completion came and went year after year. You folks should count your lucky stars that the (s)CAM was cancelled. Very nice restoration of car Number 7. Too bad it isn't in use on a tourist operation. Well done, RLR, thanks again for another educational presentation.
Really glad you enjoyed the film and thank you for your thoughts - given the ambition of the CAM scheme, I can imagine that the £4.6 billion figure would've been met and exceeded very quickly - anything that involves tunneling only means investors and taxpayers have to dig deeper!
Payback for most city's insacialble appetite for the motor vehicle....oh please take me back 70yrs when we already had in place a workable transport system?
Let me guess - you lived in the core city. Because onoy there it worked in the 1970s. If you had to go from rural town to city - one option per hour between 6 and 18, one each two hours until 22 o'clock then nothing until 6.
