Old Tram Depots still in existence

[PhilJ W]

Poplar Depot.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5158247,-0.0065001,3a,75y,81.58t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1siQV3Db1qc4AI4W8tbhiGJQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

Edited February 9, 2020 by PhilJ W

[timatheronwood]

Oxford Horse Trams had a depot in Green Street Oxford. I think the building is still the same one. The upper concrete lintel shows the height of the large doors that were there when I lived further along the street in the early '80s:

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.7456855,-1.2331641,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sCEHyW49kkGdZ1k3_SMQiGw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

Tim

[melmerby]

48 minutes ago, timatheronwood said:

Oxford Horse Trams had a depot in Green Street Oxford. I think the building is still the same one. The upper concrete lintel shows the height of the large doors that were there when I lived further along the street in the early '80s:

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.7456855,-1.2331641,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sCEHyW49kkGdZ1k3_SMQiGw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

Tim

This early OS has it in a different location, close by:

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/#zoom=18&lat=51.7458&lon=-1.2333&layers=168&right=BingHyb

[PhilJ W]

8 hours ago, timatheronwood said:

Oxford Horse Trams had a depot in Green Street Oxford. I think the building is still the same one. The upper concrete lintel shows the height of the large doors that were there when I lived further along the street in the early '80s:

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.7456855,-1.2331641,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sCEHyW49kkGdZ1k3_SMQiGw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

Tim

 

7 hours ago, melmerby said:

This early OS has it in a different location, close by:

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/#zoom=18&lat=51.7458&lon=-1.2333&layers=168&right=BingHyb

The site of the old depot is now covered with modern housing (Galpin Close).

Edited February 10, 2020 by PhilJ W

[melmerby]

On 09/03/2014 at 18:38, Beatty 139 said:

A few more I am aware of in the West Midlands (or is it Greater Birmingham now?)

 

Kings Heath Car sheds,  from steam tram days, the steam depot has gone but International Stock in Silver St is the Car Shed, you will need to go inside to see its history that its not a new structure.

 

Sadly International Stock closed in February this year and the old Steam Tram Depot has just been demolished to make way for 52 retirement homes.

[andytrains]

Creation Skatepark in the old bus/tram depot in Balsall Heath, Birmingham. I have mentioned it before, but now even more memorable as our 33 year old son broke his femur, skating in a bowl. He had to be winched out by the fire service.

[45655]

The old York tram depôt at Fulford was still in situ when I lived in York in the late 70s, complete with the 3’6” gauge depôt fan in the forecourt. At the time the premises were occupied by a Ford commercial vehicle dealership. I thought that was not bad considering that the trams were abandoned in 1935. I wonder whether it is still there?

 

York had one trolley bus route out to Stockton Lane, worked latterly by three rather fine single deckers. They were housed in a small depôt in the city centre but when they had to go to Fulford for maintenance they used the tramway overhead with a “ball and chain” dragged behind for the negative return.  The city centre depôt was also still there in the late 70s - I believe that after the trolley buses finished it was occupied for a time by Nevil Shute’s Airspeed concern.

 

Happy days!

 

Keith

Alton.

[melmerby]

3 hours ago, andytrains said:

Creation Skatepark in the old bus/tram depot in Balsall Heath, Birmingham. I have mentioned it before, but now even more memorable as our 33 year old son broke his femur, skating in a bowl. He had to be winched out by the fire service.

In have read somewhere that some track is still in place below the modern flooring for the skateboard/climbing activities.

 

It's a shame about the office block in front as it was fully refurbished some years ago but got no takers, so has returned to it's former derelict state

2008:

https://goo.gl/maps/RKJjybMFsFpzvL3k9

 

2012:

https://goo.gl/maps/nRGgzjBWNgAkC5W3A

 

2022:

https://goo.gl/maps/jWk9UMHyw9h8EB9r8

 

 

[tractionman]

3 hours ago, 45655 said:

The old York tram depôt at Fulford was still in situ when I lived in York in the late 70s, complete with the 3’6” gauge depôt fan in the forecourt. At the time the premises were occupied by a Ford commercial vehicle dealership. I thought that was not bad considering that the trams were abandoned in 1935. I wonder whether it is still there?

 

York had one trolley bus route out to Stockton Lane, worked latterly by three rather fine single deckers. They were housed in a small depôt in the city centre but when they had to go to Fulford for maintenance they used the tramway overhead with a “ball and chain” dragged behind for the negative return.  The city centre depôt was also still there in the late 70s - I believe that after the trolley buses finished it was occupied for a time by Nevil Shute’s Airspeed concern.

 

Happy days!

 

Keith

Alton.

 

lots of fun to be had tracing the old depots using the historic OS 25" scale maps on NLS, here's Fulford, the map can be made transparent to compare to modern aerial imagery...

 

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=18&lat=53.94382&lon=-1.07429&layers=168&b=1

 

and here's the location on Google--https://goo.gl/maps/Z7aypEC6pPd99Hr87

 

now a supermarket :-(

 

Edited August 20, 2022 by tractionman

[melmerby]

Moseley's office block is grade 2 listed (as is the tram depot/workshops) and the owner a Mr Safdar Zaman had not refurbed it as required by planning conditions back in 2011/12 but it's recent neglect means it's now worse than it was then.

 

Probably a case of wait until it falls down, then officially demolish it and built a block of flats☹️

[andytrains]

Re: the tracks at Balsall Heath. I remember when my kids were in their teens I used to take them there and I remember some traces of the tram tracks. Although they were filled in. Probably when it became just buses.

[melmerby]

39 minutes ago, andytrains said:

Re: the tracks at Balsall Heath. I remember when my kids were in their teens I used to take them there and I remember some traces of the tram tracks. Although they were filled in. Probably when it became just buses.

That seemed to be the fate of much of the tram network in Brum and probably elsewhere.

Initially the tracks were filled and only removed when major road work was required, such as complete resurfacing

I can remember seeing bits of track exposed (and removed) when work was going on.

Edited August 20, 2022 by melmerby

[Arun Sharma]

Middleton Press's book "Walthamstow & Leyton Tramways" has photographs and maps showing the 1905 Walthamstow Tram Depot on Chingford Road [London E17]. The site became a trolleybus depot in the late 1930s and then a bus garage from around 1960 to quite recently. Most of the site has now been turned into a housing estate named 'Omnibus Way' but the original Tramway offices still survive almost intact and I photographed the building last week:

 

I don't know what the present building is used for though it certainly appears to be occupied and has been Grade 2 Listed since 1993.

The frieze shows the original ownership:

 

Edited November 2, 2022 by Arun Sharma

[Arun Sharma]

Given that the telephone pole doesn't appear to be connected to anything, I wonder if that is included in the listing?

[Nearholmer]

I'm a great fan of the one in Wantage, because it is a sort of miniature of the kind of building shown here, as befits such a short and often skint tramway.

[KeithMacdonald]

Thanks to Gareth Williams on Flickr

 

Quote

Buckland Tram Depot. Dover, UK. - Buckland Tram Depot had four tracks, each capable of holding four trams. Trams ran in Dover from 1897 to 1936. Now a car showroom and garage. There are still some nice old iron columns inside holding it all up.

 

 

[KeithMacdonald]

Tramway Village

https://www.tramway.co.uk/explore/village-scene/

 

Visible here:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.0892787,-1.4857566,3a,59.4y,347.19h,95.53t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s3NGgku-1CqPOu3KirndjSg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3D3NGgku-1CqPOu3KirndjSg%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D221.36172%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en

 

Curiously, also currently hosting a Dr Who TARDIS

https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1109166

[KeithMacdonald]

Inside a Blackpool tram depot

 

 

[Johann Marsbar]

Sadly this one doesn't survive any more - having lasted well into the 1980's in this state......

 

 

This was the second depot operated by the Ipswich Tramway Company in Quadling Street, Ipswich, and actually lasted, more or less complete, including the offices and stables, as a haulage depot until the area was completely redeveloped as "Cardinal Park" in the 1990's.  The wooden car shed + roof tiles came down in the 1980's and were given to the Ipswich Transport Museum with the idea of possibly re-erecting it at a permanent museum site. In the event that never happened and the wood was beyond redemption and the roof tiles were disposed of.

We do have the rails (actually of German origin) and setts though from when the site was finally cleared and have used some of those to display our former Cambridge horse tram.....

 

 

Full drawings were made of all the buildings prior to demolition, so, in theory, you could reconstruct a replica of it given a site and the money to do it.....

 

 

 

.

Edited November 5, 2022 by Johann Marsbar
added photo

[Morello Cherry]

Not in the UK but one old tram depot in an urban setting with trams that you can go around is in Vienna. The Vienna Tram museum is in an old depot. The nearest U-Bahn station does give away the origins of the area  - Schlachthausgasse (Abatoir/Slaughterhouse Street). It is a very good museum and pretty cheap and well worth a visit if you are in Vienna.

 

https://tram.at/remise/?lang=en

 

 

 

[Bomp]

These three images show the Tramsheds on Les Banques, St Peter Port, Guernsey.  My current employer uses them as an engineering base and we fuel and wash our coaches there.  There are still rails on much of the floor.  

[melmerby]

Nice.

It must've been a replacement depot as this 1898 map shows the original:

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?layers=7e9e6182550149f7a8a1479e06b594b7

[PhilJ W]

A new depot was opened for the electric cars in 1894 and that is the one in the photographs. Its quite likely that the 1898 map hadn't been updated to show it.

[31A]

On 20/08/2022 at 11:21, 45655 said:

The old York tram depôt at Fulford was still in situ when I lived in York in the late 70s, complete with the 3’6” gauge depôt fan in the forecourt. At the time the premises were occupied by a Ford commercial vehicle dealership. I thought that was not bad considering that the trams were abandoned in 1935. I wonder whether it is still there?

 

York had one trolley bus route out to Stockton Lane, worked latterly by three rather fine single deckers. They were housed in a small depôt in the city centre but when they had to go to Fulford for maintenance they used the tramway overhead with a “ball and chain” dragged behind for the negative return.  The city centre depôt was also still there in the late 70s - I believe that after the trolley buses finished it was occupied for a time by Nevil Shute’s Airspeed concern.

 

Happy days!

 

Keith

Alton.

 

Sorry I'm a bit late with this, I don't look at this part of the forum very often!

 

I took these pictures of the site of the York trolley bus depot in February 2017, just after it had been demolished.  As you can see, it did have tramway rails in it, although I have been told by those who know that they were never connected to the tramway system and their purpose seems to have been a bit of a mystery!  The tram lines did turn from Piccadilly into Merchantgate at the junction which was behind me when I took the pictures.

 

 

 

The site is now occupied by this:

 

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.9571177,-1.078248,3a,75y,90h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sdiHudSbrkbUhTZYDPDTtFw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en

 

 

 

 

 

 

[PhilJ W]

The trolleybuses in York ceased operating in the 1930's. 

https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/11273915.a-look-back-at-yorks-original-electric-powered-public-transport/