Video Fyfe Robertson - Glasgow's last tram
- Thread starter Neil
- Start date
JimG
Western Thunderer
I knew that tram route well. I worked at BBC Glasgow from 1961 and lived in Dumbarton. So I drove up to work on two wheels normally using the A82 (Boulevard) which was a dual carriageway to the outskirts of Glasgow. However, there were regular very early starts to cover the Scottish version of Programme Parade on your own and when I was on that shift I chose to come up the A814 - the "front" road via Dalmuir/Clydebank to Partick in Glasgow, since this road was the main tram route into Glasgow and it gave me cover if I had a puncture or breakdown. So at 6am it was usually just me and the trams on the Number 9 route - Dalmuir to Auchenshuggle, and they could go - especially the old four wheelers (shooglies).
Fortunately I never had to avail myself of a tram.
But when they closed the tram system down, they had a week when you could travel what was left of the system on a special ticket, and I actually went all the way to Auchenshuggle, that almost mystical name only ever seen on tram route panels. So I have been there.
Jim.
Fortunately I never had to avail myself of a tram.But when they closed the tram system down, they had a week when you could travel what was left of the system on a special ticket, and I actually went all the way to Auchenshuggle, that almost mystical name only ever seen on tram route panels. So I have been there.
Jim.
Martin Shaw
Western Thunderer
Jim will probably know this but I always believed it was a made up name, if you go where it's supposed to be there is nothing there which rather lends veracity, actually it is an old gaelic name for a field of rye and is an area just north of London Road near Mount Vernon. The canal bridge hump at Dalmuir was there until the canal was rebuilt for the millenium. I suppose Fyfe Robertson on the Tonight programme with Cliff Michelmore might have been my earliest exposure to a Scottish accent.
Martin
Martin
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Jordan
Mid-Western Thunderer
One of my mum's 'claims to fame' is that she rode one of the last trams down Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow in 1962. She first told me about it* when I was very young and we were looking at the Tram in the then Birmingham Science Museum, early 1970s (along with City of Birmingham, and the Spitfire & Hurricane 
- I digress)
Of course at that age I couldn't really comprehend what she was on about - probably had no idea where Glasgow was at the time, either!! - and being as it was a few years before I was born it sounded like Ancient History to me!!
Interesting to see the reality of that time once again, and lament how long ago it is now, really!!
*and, as mothers do, oft-repeated since...
- I digress)Of course at that age I couldn't really comprehend what she was on about - probably had no idea where Glasgow was at the time, either!! - and being as it was a few years before I was born it sounded like Ancient History to me!!
Interesting to see the reality of that time once again, and lament how long ago it is now, really!!
*and, as mothers do, oft-repeated since...
oldravendale
Western Thunderer
I remember - just - trams along The Embankment in London. I must have been about 5. I traveled a lot on the trolleybuses after the trams were gone.
A couple of years ago I took one of the Hidden London tours of the Kingsway Tram Tunnel. I'd always been fascinated by that since working in Kingsway in the 1960s. A few years later when I was rich enough to own a car and later a company car it would be a regular route from south of the river where the road used part of the old tram tunnel to get traffic direct from Waterloo Bridge, under The Aldwych emerging in Kingsway.
I reckon memories are every bit as good as they used to be!
Brian
A couple of years ago I took one of the Hidden London tours of the Kingsway Tram Tunnel. I'd always been fascinated by that since working in Kingsway in the 1960s. A few years later when I was rich enough to own a car and later a company car it would be a regular route from south of the river where the road used part of the old tram tunnel to get traffic direct from Waterloo Bridge, under The Aldwych emerging in Kingsway.
I reckon memories are every bit as good as they used to be!
Brian