A tram to Cleethorpes? Don’t be silly!

[peterw]

Before the second world war my life as a child was greatly enhanced by the sure and certain knowledge that when schools broke for the main holiday week, my grandmother would take me by train to Cleethorpes.

 

Over the Pennines, the majority of people living in Lancashire’s towns and cities spent their holiday weeks in Blackpool, once again travelling by train. But had they boarded any tram from, say, Oldham or Ashton-under-Lyne or Stockport, and made the entire journey — with just a few miles of walking — by changing from either an electric trolley-bus or gram, to one or other of the same in the various towns along the way, assuming they carried no baggage they could have reached Blackpool without a great deal of trouble.

 

Child or man or young but personable teenage idiot, I travelled through Sheffield on either a Sheffield tram or via Atterciffe Common on a Rotherham tram using that same, one and only route which in Sheffield began outside what had been the Brightside and Carbrook Co-operative Society’s headquarters before the Luftwaffe destroyed it during the blitz.

 

The Rotherham trams were driven from only one end, so in the city and in the town, trams had to have a turning loop, a fact I add purely for interest.

 

Alongside its fleet of double-decked trams Rotherham had fast, powerful and I suspect reliable electric trolley-buses serving its districts. Sheffield had an efficient mix of trams and buses.

 

And the big question is: how far away from home could a Sheffielder go, usng both tram or trolley-bus from one outer terminus to the next, on its way to Cleethorpes or any other east coast resort?

 

Or did this fantasy journey end via a trolley-bus to the fast-developing outskirts of Rotherham?

[Texas]

I think I got to Wath-on-Dearne one time. It was somewhere in the boondocks anyhow. You're not holding back a secret route are you?

[hutch]

I have a small book printed around 1910[anti bus]states the routes to travel anywhere by tram includes Manchester to Sheffield get off in Hyde and walk to Crookes over the Snake pass.

[Greybeard]

In the 40s I used to regularly travel to Preston by tram and bus.

 

Tram from Lowfields school to the bottom of Commercial street. Bus rom Victoria station approach [No 48] to Manchester. Walk over to Mosley street bus station and get the Ribble bus for Blackpool getting off at Preston.

 

I also did a different way once - bus to Halifax - another bus to Burnley and then a bus to Preston.

 

First couple of times I travelled with my Gran but from age of nine I did it on my own.

 

Child Protection Agency would probably have a fit about it these days

[Fareast]

I'm rather surprised, Greybeard, that children, under the age of 18, can still travel on public transport, unaccompanied, in the U.K. ! I suppose all the drivers and passengers have been checked by the CRO, though ?

Yes, it was a different world, a good few years ago. I got my first bike, in 1949, aged 8, and used to roam all over Sheffield and then come home and check where I 'd been on a ' Geographia ' street map. Also, of course, all of us kids would travel singly, at one time or another on buses or trams.

I find a lot of S.F. posters who weren 't around, pre-1970, simply don 't believe what a relaxed, quite law-abiding, happy place Sheffield [ and the U.K. ] was, compared to today 's Nanny Society-----a cross between a kindergarden and a Thug 's Paradise !