SENDING recollections of his home town in pre-war days, 78-year-old ex-Darrener, Cyril Plant, of Eastwood, Notts, tells "Looking Back" that at this spot (pictured) - Darwen's boundary with Blackburn - tram conductors would come round saying "Fares, please" for a second time,

"Travelling to Blackburn from Darwen at that time, you had to pay twice - once to the boundary and then again into Blackburn," he says.

The tram at the right is one of two streamliners - known locally as 'Queen Mary' and 'Queen Elizabeth' - that were built by English Electric at Preston to a design similar to the ones run by Blackburn Corporation.

Bought by Darwen in 1936, at a time when may towns were replacing trams with buses, they were sold to the Llandudno and Colwyn Bay tramway undertaking 10 years later when Darwen finally pulled the plug on its electric fleet. But before they rattled to a halt, those old-timers did sterling service helping former Sudell Road schoolboy Cyril get from his home in Warwick Avenue, Darwen, on the first leg of his journey to the Bristol Aircraft factory at Clayton-le-Moors where he worked until he was called up into the Army in 1943. Though having lived in Nottingham, where he married in 1945, ever since he was demobbed, he still recalls Darwen boasting not only five cinemas , but also a live theatre..

And despite there being so much choice, people rioted to get into the packed-out Palladium to see the 1929 film, The Desert Song, starring John Boles as the Red Shadow.

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