Alternate History- British interurban tramways

[Pyewipecarshed]

Alternate History- British interurban tramways


The British isles do pretty well on most types of railway history, but one thing that's missing is interurban tramways, apart from the Blackpool to Fleetwood line. There were some rural tramways, like the Burton and Ashby or Cambourne and Redruth; some tramways like Grimsby and Immingham which used interurban equipment- but nothing approaching the networks of relatively fast trams joining large towns and smaller settlements. In America, these reached incredible distances, such that it was possible to travel for over 1,000 miles on them; in Germany, quite a few survive as the more popular corridors of tram systems; in Japan, they were mostly upgraded to form that country's network of private railways, often overlapping with routes served by the mainline JR network. Belgium, France, Italy and Switzerland also have interurban routes surviving today.


I presume the reason Britain had fewer interurrbans is that it had gained a more intensive network of mainline railways earlier in victorian times- indeed, it's notable how little line building of any sort went on in the 1900-1940 period when most interurbans were built abroad. The 1900 date was probably due to tramway technology needing to advance enough, and the 1940 end date due to competition from buses. At least some of the electric suburban lines of the period- such as the Wimbledon-Sutton and Chessington South lines- might alternatively have been built using tramway technology, if their had been a fast tramway into London instead of the LSWR and London Underground heavy rail lines. The Southern Heights Light railway also seems fairly similar to lots of interurban schemes abroad.


My question is- where in the UK would such a network have been most likely to arise during the 1900-1940 period? London has the disadvantage that tube extensions would presumably have been a better thing to build- I guess suburban Birmingham and Manchester are possibilities, but they mostly had fairly slow tram systems running on streets, so nothing obvious for interurban lines to feed into to reach the centre. It possibly needs a town growing from small to large during the early twentieth century, so that fairly fast tracks could reach reasonably close to the city center, or perhaps a 1920s version of a New Town, with transport to it planned from the start.

Alternatively, an existing railway- presumably a fairly isolated one- might have found it covenient to buy tramcar style equipment, as happened on the Swansea and Mumbles...

You could argue the case for the Grimsby and Immingham being a true interurban, even though it didn't reach the town of Immingham (Immingham Town station was a misnomer, it just happened to be closer to the town than any other point on the line!).
It was designed to move workers to the docks and locomotive sheds, and moved large numbers of people in convoys of trams at the start and end of the working day, with a less frequent off-peak shuttle. It was anything but a rural backwater!

 

[etr221]

It is good fun to imagine what electrification standards Brunel might have specified had he been alive in the early twentieth century- probably, like the LBSCR overhead wire scheme, designed for far faster, heavier, longer distance trains than would have ever used it in practise.

The GWR West of England scheme was specified as 3kV dc, at the time (1930s) probably the optimum for a new scheme, at least in my opinion.

In comparing LMS and LNER, something not mentioned was that there a proposal for Crewe-Carlisle electrification on the LMS c1923, which got no further than the NER Y-N scheme

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 11 Oct 2025 ==

You could argue the case for the Grimsby and Immingham being a true interurban, even though it didn't reach the town of Immingham (Immingham Town station was a misnomer, it just happened to be closer to the town than any other point on the line!).
It was designed to move workers to the docks and locomotive sheds, and moved large numbers of people in convoys of trams at the start and end of the working day, with a less frequent off-peak shuttle. It was anything but a rural backwater!

In America, Interurbans - proper ones, as distinct from inter town streetcar lines (which is how would categorise the G&I) - were officially categorised as 'Electric Railroads': in many ways to 'Steam Railroad' standards (and frequently interchanging freight cars with them), just perhaps more lightly built, that in the UK would have been 'light railways'. I would suggest the only real equivalent in the British Isles was (is!) the Manx Electric; also perhaps the Swansea and Mumbles in its electric era.

 

[The Pelican]

You could argue the case for the Grimsby and Immingham being a true interurban, even though it didn't reach the town of Immingham (Immingham Town station was a misnomer, it just happened to be closer to the town than any other point on the line!).
It was designed to move workers to the docks and locomotive sheds, and moved large numbers of people in convoys of trams at the start and end of the working day, with a less frequent off-peak shuttle. It was anything but a rural backwater!

I think it probably was a true interurban- but it was both unusual and in a fairly remote part of the UK- many of the Japanese networks are in major cities, and lots of the German ones join medium sized cities in large industrial reigons. I'd certainly count it, though, along with Blackpool-Fleetwood etc.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 11 Oct 2025 ==

The GWR West of England scheme was specified as 3kV dc, at the time (1930s) probably the optimum for a new scheme, at least in my opinion.

In comparing LMS and LNER, something not mentioned was that there a proposal for Crewe-Carlisle electrification on the LMS c1923, which got no further than the NER Y-N scheme

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 11 Oct 2025 ==


In America, Interurbans - proper ones, as distinct from inter town streetcar lines (which is how would categorise the G&I) - were officially categorised as 'Electric Railroads': in many ways to 'Steam Railroad' standards (and frequently interchanging freight cars with them), just perhaps more lightly built, that in the UK would have been 'light railways'. I would suggest the only real equivalent in the British Isles was (is!) the Manx Electric; also perhaps the Swansea and Mumbles in its electric era.

Yes, 3kv, presumably roughly twice the 1.5kv voltage other schemes were using at the time- forward looking etc- like broad gauge. (I know that different voltages of DC are compatible with each other by fairly simple switches, unlike different gauges.)

 

[eldomtom2]

I think it probably was a true interurban- but it was both unusual and in a fairly remote part of the UK- many of the Japanese networks are in major cities, and lots of the German ones join medium sized cities in large industrial reigons. I'd certainly count it, though, along with Blackpool-Fleetwood etc.

The thing with "interurban" is that the definition has been garbled a bit. It was originally coined to distinguish electric rail/tramways that connected different urban areas from electric rail/tramways that served a single urban area. But because the vehicles etc. used on "interurban" systems diverged from those used on "intraurban" systems due to their different needs, "interurban" nowadays more means "electric street-running heavy rail".

 

[The Pelican]

The thing with "interurban" is that the definition has been garbled a bit. It was originally coined to distinguish electric rail/tramways that connected different urban areas from electric rail/tramways that served a single urban area. But because the vehicles etc. used on "interurban" systems diverged from those used on "intraurban" systems due to their different needs, "interurban" nowadays more means "electric street-running heavy rail".

I agree, although I think it can include light rail when it runs between cities.

I was particularly curious about networks because some of the Japanese and German systems, as well as the American and Belgian ones in the past, had quite a few seperate lines covering a substantial area- something like the Tokyu Railway has quite a large network of lines in South West Tokyo. I think the closest thing to this in the UK has been various tube lines which branch substantially (the Met north-west of Baker Street, the Central line East of Liverpool Street, the Picadilly and District west of Earls Court), or perhaps the smallest and most self-contained railway networks like the London-Tilbury and Southend or Colonel Stephen's three branch East Kent Railway- but the latter was more focussed on freight than passenger traffic. An important aspect for me is that the network should be additional to the main railway lines in the area- allowing such interesting things as the "Bahnhofplatz" stations in Brig or Chur, which serve the narrow gauge railways in each, or the various Japanese railway's seperate stations in each town- so that is partly why I find the networks of several lines more interesting than the single line systems.

 

[The exile]

]

The Ruhr network looks absolutely incredible- I suspect it's a lucky evolution in some ways- the historical eras willing to fill up the roads with tram lines, and the eras willing to pay to put those lines into tunnels, probably don't tend to coexist- so the Ruhr/

You wouldn't actually want to create the Rhein/Ruhr "network" as it stands, given the fact that it doesn't actually share a common track gauge (Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Duisburg and the Essen / BOGESTRA area "Stadtbahn" are standard gauge, while Krefeld and the Essen, Mülheim, Oberhausen, Bochum and Gelsenkirchen trams proper are metre gauge.)

 

[The Pelican]

You wouldn't actually want to create the Rhein/Ruhr "network" as it stands, given the fact that it doesn't actually share a common track gauge (Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Duisburg and the Essen / BOGESTRA area "Stadtbahn" are standard gauge, while Krefeld and the Essen, Mülheim, Oberhausen, Bochum and Gelsenkirchen trams proper are metre gauge.)

While I agree from a practical viewpoint, the systems around Tokyo and Osaka, as well as some of the Swiss multi-town street running railways, and the interurbans around Kopenick in Berlin, all feature some Standard and some Metre (1067mm in Japan) gauge railways. Not many of these have mixed-gauge track either, although some is proposed in Kamata near Tokyo in the future. I agree though, not the way to design a new system!

 

[Tester]

While I agree from a practical viewpoint, the systems around Tokyo and Osaka, as well as some of the Swiss multi-town street running railways, and the interurbans around Kopenick in Berlin, all feature some Standard and some Metre (1067mm in Japan) gauge railways. Not many of these have mixed-gauge track either, although some is proposed in Kamata near Tokyo in the future. I agree though, not the way to design a new system!

Don't forget the 'Scotch gauge' (1372mm) lines in Tokyo!

 

[The Pelican]

Don't forget the 'Scotch gauge' (1372mm) lines in Tokyo!

Yes, of course- one of the very few cities with three different gauges in it's transport system, along with Barcelona. Glasgow- in the era of 1,435mm mainline railway, 1,416mm tramway, and 1,219mm subway- was probably as close as any UK city got, although I'm not sure 1,416mm is far enough from standard to really count!

 

[Fawkes Cat]

Yes, of course- one of the very few cities with three different gauges in it's transport system, along with Barcelona. Glasgow- in the era of 1,435mm mainline railway, 1,416mm tramway, and 1,219mm subway- was probably as close as any UK city got, although I'm not sure 1,416mm is far enough from standard to really count!

In the absence of tram-trains and accepting that being underground isolated the subway, I see no problem with Glasgow: no one would have imagined through-running between modes, so no one was inconvenienced by the fact that through-running was impossible.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

In the absence of tram-trains and accepting that being underground isolated the subway, I see no problem with Glasgow: no one would have imagined through-running between modes, so no one was inconvenienced by the fact that through-running was impossible.

The Glasgow tram gauge was actually designed to allow standard gauge wagons to reach the various shipyards, running on their flanges in the slotted rails. Several of the yards had their own electric locos to haul them.

 

[The Pelican]

In the absence of tram-trains and accepting that being underground isolated the subway, I see no problem with Glasgow: no one would have imagined through-running between modes, so no one was inconvenienced by the fact that through-running was impossible.

I think a standard-gauge subway might have made a subway extension taking over local railways easier- these kinds of extensions happened a lot in London and Liverpool. The original subway was cable hauled and lacked any sets of points at all on the running lines, but after it was converted to third rail electrification in the 1930s, a junction could have been added to allow trains to diverge somewhere.