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When this history was first proposed nearly ten years ago it was intended to occupy two volumes, each of 180 pages in the present (slightly over A4) format but produced to the highest quality which can be met in today’s market. One may dream of hand-tooled Morocco leather bindings, gold casing with deckle-edged paper but reality intrudes and what we have instead is 450gsm paper, with virtually every page of the new standard having a reproduction of some form of illustration. There are many photographs, innumerable line illustrations ranging from contemporary cartoons to equally contemporary engineering drawings, and the text carries many advertisements mostly culled from local newspapers; while integrated into the text there are a number of 1890s Ordnance Survey maps together with material we have been able to use from the National Archives. Wherever possible, too, local study libraries have been plundered of their often invaluable documents, and microfilm readers (all too often rickety and over-used) have given access to many really obscure journals and papers which, to use that word again, give us a contemporary view of Britain’s steam trams.
Throughout it is inevitable, given the author’s early training, that the social impact of steam tramways on towns and country alike is balanced against the history and engineering of the lines. There is no reason whatever why history should be either boring or arid – to give two examples. When the trams first started running in many towns the clergy were vehemently opposed to Sunday operation as it would mean men and women instead of going docilely to church would get out into the countryside and enjoy themselves. But once (as was inevitable) the trams began to run, the same clergy were only too pleased to use them for Sunday School outings and the like. For another aspect of cause and effect let us take the case of a steam tram driver badly scalded by a blown boiler tube. On his death, which could take days, the company might (and municipal operators certainly did) pay compensation of, say, £5. His workmates, especially latterly when the position of driver was no longer held by 17 year-old youths but by ‘proper’ enginemen, would get up a collection and the public might arrange a subscription totalling, perhaps, another £5. But when this sum ran out in a month or so what then for the wife and family? Sadly we rarely know the answer to this but where possible the social lives of not only the public but of the tram crews are lightly drawn.
It is worth mentioning, to quell any rumours, that no grants have been made available to help produce these books and in reality the only people making a profit from them are the printers and bookbinders. Cynical laughs may arise here but consider the man who gives his time and money to keep a preserved steam locomotive in service, or a carriage or an old coal wagon which they do not and could not own. Again, every bus and coach museum in the country relies on unpaid volunteers of both sexes who give up time and money to keep the vehicles you see in excellent running order or who are behind the scenes working on skeletal wrecks. The author, we are told, spent many years and considerable financial outlay trying mainly via the Canal Transport Marketing Board to retain commercial traffics on the waterways, often in the teeth of opposition not only from the operators of the canals, but the pleasure-boat industry; all a long way from that plea by L.T.C.(Tom) Rolt in his book ‘Narrow Boat’.
Given this background that the author would plod on losing money is hardly surprising but to find a publisher, Adam Gordon, willing to carry the financial risk is truly amazing – he has long abandoned any hope of doing better than breaking even. On top of this we have so many other private individuals who write unpaid for relatively obscure transport magazines and are happy to let us use their writing verbatim – such is the quality of their research. Another proof of the enthusiasm this series has engendered is that Roger A. Smith has produced so many excellent maps for us, often at short notice and which enhance the whole production; as do in other tramway stories, the maps of John Gillham who gave us carte blanche to use as many as we wished.
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