RAILS IN THE ROAD THE BEAMISH MUSEUM TRAMWAY

THERE was a time, not all that long ago, when The Railway Magazine carried the front cover tagline ‘FOR EVERYTHING THAT RUNS ON RAILS’. That motto has since been replaced, but The RM still tries to adhere to it by including tram and tramway news (through the Metro and Heritage Trams pages) within the larger railway coverage.

Street tramways are, after all, a railway, and when it comes to tram preservation we have fared pretty well, all things considered. Many restored trams survive in museums across the country, while the Tramway Museum Society’s Crich Tramway Village (National Tramway Museum) flies the flag as the national centre for both heritage tram restoration and operation.

Yet Crich is not alone, and most of the country’s population is within relatively easy reach of a preserved electric or cable tramway. The East Anglia Transport Museum serves eastern England, while the Seaton Tramway in Devon has the South West covered.

In the North West we have the Heaton Park Tramway, near Manchester, and Wirral Heritage Tramway in Birkenhead, the Midlands has the Black Country Living Museum with its 3ft 6in-gauge tramway, Scotland has operational trams at the Museum of Scottish Industrial Life at Summerlee, and Wales has the remarkable Great Orme Tramway.

Of course, one cannot forget the heritage tram fleet that still plies its trade on the modernised Blackpool system, and three individual tramways are still at work