R.o.B Tramways
The Tramways of Gateshead and Newcastle
Compiled by Mr John Grant
The first horse drawn tramways in Newcastle started in 1879 run by The Newcastle and Gosforth Tramways and Carriage Company who laid tramway from the city centre as far as Mistletoe road along Osborne road in Gosforth for use by Horse drawn trams. With the growth of the city the tramways also grew to serve the new areas though there was competition to the east with the NER suburban lines to the coast. By 1893 there were 272 horses hauling trams on a tramway system of 17 miles averaging a speed of 5mph. Whilst public transport in Gateshead began when the Gateshead and District Tramways Company began operations in 1883, prior to this attempts had been made to establish a hackney-carriage service, which had begun in 1827, with fares of one shilling (5pence) per mile. On the tramway motive power was initially given by Steam Tram engines but in 1897 the British Electric Traction Company (BET, also see the R.o.B Articles on Croydon's Tramways) purchased a controlling interest in the company. The BET also had an interest in the Jarrow & District Electric Traction Company and the Tynemouth Electric Traction Company buying them off the local councils.
With the dawn of the new century plans were already underway to improve the tramways of Newcastle and on the 13th April 1901 the new electric cars began operating along some of the former horse tram routes once the necessary changes to track and foundations had been made along with the installation of power supply equipment the Gateshead system following suit under the BET in the May of the same year with tram services running to Heworth, Sherrif Hill, Dunston and Low Fell. On the 16th December 1901 the majority of main routes were completed all using standard gauge track. The Corporations tramways were known as the �Newcastle and Corporation Tramways�. In 1904 fixed stopping places were introduced on to both systems, prior to this trams had operated a hail and ride service, With a lot of centre of the road running flags at designated stopping points would tell other road users, tram drivers and intending passengers where the tram stops were and when a car was at a stop other road vehicles were to stop and wait.
More extensions to the Newcastle tramway took place with the faster services over the coming years:
- 1904 Fenham
- 1907 Shieldfield
- 1912 Throckley
In 1908, 12million passengers were carried on the Gateshead tramways with high dividends paid to share holders with 1910 seeing the Gateshead system gain new routes to Springwell Road and Saltwell Cemetery, though the systems were a huge success though there seems to have been no intention at this early point to connect the two. In 1912 the Gateshead tramway became the first �pay-as-you-enter� system in Britain though this last venture was not a success due to the added congestion caused at the Wellington Street terminus. 1915 the name was changed to the �Newcastle Corporation Transport and Electricity Undertaking�.
Criticism of the Gateshead operation increased, notably during the First World War, boys were used as conductors, services were withdrawn without warning and the track was in a very poor condition. The town council had an option to buy the Tramways Company and used this as a threat several times in an effort to improve the system. In 1916, a fatal accident at Bensham occured when a tram ran out of control down Bensham Road overturning at the junction with Saltwell Road.
The tram accident happened on a Saturday evening on February 5th 1916 at about 7o'clock, when the number seven tram left Bensham terminus on its way to Gateshead. It successfully negotiated the steep bend at the junction of Saltwell Road and Bensham Road and had just reached the Ravensworth Hotel when the driver, Leonard George Jane, saw a stationary tram ahead. He put on his hand brake and waited. The other tram did not move and Jane sounded his bell. Still nothing, so he left his tram to investigate. Suddenly his vehicle began to move backwards and ploughed back down the bank for 200 yards, eventually overturning onto a plot of vacant land. Although there were some severe injuries, there were no fatalities among the passengers on the tram. Four people, however, had been walking up the bank and were now lying dead. At the coroners court a verdict of accidental death was returned at the inquest. It was discovered the tram driver, who was only 20, had been driving for only two months and had failed to put on the track brake. He was later charged with manslaughter but was acquitted of the charge. This spurred the company to make necessary improvements as did the threat of a government enquiry in 1920, but complaints were still to be heard.
On the Newcastle system there was further expansion with new routes to:
- Forest Hall
- Westmoor
- The entrance to Gosforth Park Racecourse extended from the original terminus at Gosforth High Street
The Gateshead Corporation wanted to purchase the BET controlled tramway but could not afford the asking price of �500,000 and the tramway remained in private hands. Some modernization was carried out and a double track link was made with the Newcastle system over the High Level in the January of 1923 seeing the connection of the Newcastle corporation tramways and those of Gateshead, superseding the horse-brakes which had ran from 1878.
The high level Bridge: The Newcastle and Darlington railway had reached Gateshead sometime around 1846 but could get no further in to Newcastle due to the wide Tyne Gorge that separates Durham from Northumberland. The idea of building a bridge for the railway over the Tyne gorge was so overawing that the railway company proposed to totally miss out Newcastle itself and continue to Scotland via the Newcastle and Carlisle railway which would have left the city at the end of a branch. Needless to say this did not go down well with the city Corporation who negotiated for a bridge to be built to the design of Robert Stephenson. In 1845 work started on construction of the bridge starting with the pillars that would hold the bridge up 85� above high tide level with separate road and rail sections the road section running inside the bridge the railway on top with a length of 1337�. The bridge was opened on 28th September 1849 (on the same day but 24 years after the opening of the Stockton and Darlington railway) by HRH Queen Victoria. The bridge is still in use today by East coast main line services to and from London Kings Cross and Edinburgh. For the occasion double deck Gateshead car No.67 did the honours with crowds turning out to watch the event. This resulted in several tram routes in Gateshead run jointly between the Gateshead Tramways company and the Newcastle Corporation Tramways with through running on several routes. With the increase in traffic 1925 saw another extension of Newcastle�s tramway from Fenham to Westerhope.
By 1928 Newcastle had 300 trams running on 51 miles of track making it the biggest tramway system between Leeds and Edinburgh. The Newcastle trams were housed in three depots, Byker depot in the east of the City was the main depot and workshops and saw trolleybus and motor bus operation until it was closed and knocked down in 2003. The Haymarket depot was a former horse depot in the centre of the city and Wingrove depot in the west end of the city. With the connection of the two systems tram traffic increased but there was the problem of congestion on the bridge resulting in proposals for a new link over the Tyne further east which would also have enough room for tram operation. This was to result in today�s world famous Tyne Bridge.
The Tyne Bridge: Many people believe that this bridge with its single high arch was the protoype for the Sydney harbour bridge that was opened in 1931 in Australia. However the builders of both bridges, Dorman, Long & Co of Middlesborough, had already started work on the Sydney Bridge when the contract for the Tyne Bridge was given to them. The construction of the Tyne Bridge was rapid with the two separate sides of the arch being extended over the river as they were built support cables holding the sections in place, the arch finally joining on the 25th February 1928. When the bridge was finally complete it was officially opened on the 10th October 1928 by their Royal Highnesses King George V and Queen Mary. The bridge bottom is 26mtrs above high water level with the arch being 55mtrs high the whole weighing in at 7112 metric tons! Today it is still used for road traffic.
In the 1930�s with the increase of vehicular traffic the tramways of Gateshead were starting to become a nuisance as with many other towns and cities around the country and when the introduction of Trolleybuses was considered it was believed that the end of the Gateshead trams was on its way, the Newcastle tramways already succumbing to trolleybuses from the October of 1935 and by the beginning of World War 2 there were nearly 100 trolleybuses in operation. One problem for the Gateshead system was how to get trolleybuses under the low bridges on West Street and High Street that carried the railway line from Newcastle to Sunderland, to get the trolleybuses to the Tyne Bridge crossing. However the Second World War intervened and saw delay in the closing of the tramways. After the war the tramway was becoming very worn down and it was proposed to replace it, though the idea of using Trolleybuses was abandoned in favour of motor omnibuses. The Newcastle system, after the war, saw tram replacement begin in earnest with 186 new trolleybuses ordered between 1946 and 1948 to replace the earlier trolleys and the remaining trams.
An Act of Parliament in 1950 approved the conversion of the Gateshead routes to buses and the days of trams were numbered in both Newcastle and Gateshead. The Gateshead and Newcastle tram services were withdrawn in stages ((N) being Newcastle routes (G) being Gateshead routes):
- (N) 1st June 1946 Throckley to Scotswood Bridge
- (N) 16th April 1948 Gosforth
- (G) 17th April 1948 Low Fell to Gosforth-cars now terminated at Central Station.
- (N) 31st October 1948 Forest Hall, West Moor and the Chillingham Road/Shieldfield route
- (N) 10 September 1949 Scotswood Bridge
- (N) 4th March 1950 the services to both Saltwell Park & Wrekenton in Gateshead
- (G) 5th March 1950 Wrekenton and Heworth (both routes remained open at peak hours until overhead removed, September 1950 on route to Wrekenton).
- (G) 3rd March 1951 Saltwell Park.
- (G) 3rd March 1951 Bensham.
- (G) 7th April 1951 Low Fell.
- (G) 14th July 1951 Teams.
- The last Gateshead tram service operating was on 4th August 1951 on the Dunston service. (Please note only some of the Newcastle routes are listed due to lack of info)
Most of the former Newcastle trams were scrapped at Gosforth Park which was the first northerly terminus of the cities electric tramways taking people to the horse racing having been connected to Wallsend in 1902 and to Newcastle in 1903.
Trams did return to Gateshead in 1990 on a special track built for the 1990 Garden Festival at Gateshead, for the first time in forty years people were able to ride on traditional Tyneside Trams in Gateshead within sight of the River Tyne. Although attempts to use one of the ex-Gateshead cars failed, Newcastle No 102 performed well throughout the summer over the 1/4 mile route.
Gateshead cars Nos. 10 & 5: Writes Alan Pike, When the Gateshead system was abandoned in 1951, eighteen cars were bought by the Eastern Region of British Railways to work on their electric railway between Grimsby and Immingham. Painted dark green, they ran until the railway closed on 1 July 1961. Fortunately a car was retained by the British Transport Commission as a candidate for preservation. In 1968, in anticipation of Beamish Museum, the Northern Tramway Sponsors arranged for the tram to return to the North-East. It was returned to its original guise as Gateshead 10 at the Consett Iron Company works, before being transferred to Beamish to inaugurate passenger services on the initial stretch of the tramway in June 1973. One of its sister trams - Gateshead 5 - can be seen at the National Tramway Museum at Crich, Derbyshire. No 10 received a major rebuild between 1983 and 1985, and now appears in late 1920s condition.