In the second half of the 19th century, Belfast was the fastest growing town in the UK with labour-intensive industries such as shipbuilding, linen production and machine engineering. With thousands of new workers and residents to transport, the Belfast Street Tramways Co. opened its first horse tram line in August 1872 using a 5ft 3in (1600mm) gauge. Its success was quickly followed by extensions to more areas of the town. Parliamentary sanction in about 1878 permitted construction of more extensions and also to narrow the gauge to standard (4ft 81/2in, 1435 mm), although an Act of 1880 allowed extra time for it to be done. Belfast had been designated as a city in 1888 and, by the 1890s, the tramway had reached most of the built-up areas of the time. In a few cases, separate companies were set up to operate some of the new routes.
On 1st January 1905, the horse tramway system (except the separate Cavehill & Whitewell Tramway to the north of the city) was taken over by Belfast Corporation and electrified, but built to the unusual gauge of 4ft 9in (1448mm), even though the statutory powers appear to have specified 4ft 81/2in. The reasons for this have never been fully explained. Further new extensions were built at the same time.
The official opening of the new electric tramway was on 29th November 1905, by which time 170 open-top 4-wheel trams (nos. 1-170) had been built and delivered by Brush of Loughborough. They were shipped to Belfast, probably from Liverpool, as completed lower deck bodies, together with separate trucks and crated upper deck seat and railing fittings. They seated 22 downstairs and 32 upstairs and were mounted on standard Brill 21E trucks of 6ft 6in wheelbase, fitted with two Westinghouse '200' 35hp motors and supplied with Westinghouse 90M controllers. The livery was red and white. Fifty of the earlier horse trams were found to be in such good condition that they were rebuilt as electric cars and carried the numbers 201-250.
Our postcard shows the first "Top-decked Car", here meaning the first tram with a top cover, which was completed in early 1907. History does not appear to have recorded the tram number or the exact date but it is one of the original 170 Brush trams from 1905. It was characterised by having three ornamental iron arches on each upper-deck side, with the sides and ends being left open, as can clearly be seen. Mostly young lads are excitedly peering from the top deck. The design on the postcard was very much a 'one-off' (although there were a few other 'one-off' designs). This car was soon converted with a new standard type of top cover that provided a smaller, but fully enclosed saloon and longer open balconies at each end, although they had a roof cover. The successful 'top decking' of the fleet proceeded from 1907 until 1920, by which time almost the entire fleet had been 'covered'.
The postcard was published by "The N.P.O. Belfast" (The Northern Publishing Office of Belfast), a long-standing Belfast publisher of printed products but including local postcards over many years until the 1960s. It was posted from Belfast in July 1907 to an address in Sunderland but, sadly, the message has been so badly written that it is undecipherable!
Further route extensions followed quickly after the opening and, in 1910, the aforementioned Cavehill & Whitewell Tramway, its route and most of the trams were taken over and operated by the Corporation. In 1913, an ambitious programme of extensions and new routes was begun requiring more and more trams, some built by the Corporation from 1913 onwards and others ordered from Brush in 1919. These latter 50 cars were fully enclosed and known as 'Moffetts', after the general manager at the time. This set in motion the little tradition of naming new batches of cars after the general manager. Fifty new cars in 1930 were 'Chamberlains' and 50 more modern and streamlined trams of 1934-35 became 'McCrearys'.
At its maximum extent, the tramway system comprised over 50 miles of route and well over 300 trams but, in 1938, a trial trolleybus route replaced trams along the Falls Road, in the south-west of the city. Due to the great popularity of the new vehicles, a decision was quickly taken in January 1939 to abandon the trams in favour of trolleybuses. The war slowed progress to this goal but the official 'Last Tram Day' was 28 February 1954. In their turn, trolleybuses were ousted by Belfast Corporation buses in 1968 and the city's buses and services were transferred to Citybus in 1973.
Three Belfast trams survive in the Ulster Transport Museum: Belfast City Tramways horse tram 118, Belfast Corporation electric tram 249 of 1905 (converted from an earlier horse tram) and Belfast Corporation 'Chamberlain' tram 357 from 1929.
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