Nostalgia trip

He was a lad of just 12 when, standing with what seemed to be the town's entire population on Accrington Road as midnight approached on September 3, 1949, he watched Tram No 74, covered in multi-coloured electric bulbs and bunting, trundle along the tracks from the Boulevard to the Intack depot, ending a transport era in East Lancashire that had begun in Blackburn 68 years before.

But though it is no longer possible to journey on the green and ivory-liveried fleet - a colour scheme which, together with the trams' freedom from advertising matter, was "a pleasure to behold," according to the corporation's souvenir "farewell" brochure - 62-year-old Jim is bringing back the town's tram rides in a new book* launched on Friday at Blackburn Museum as a 50th-anniversary tribute to their sterling service.

Its send-off coincides with the start of a four-week exhibition at the museum on Blackburn's Tramways and - starting on September 21 - Jim, an apprentice training officer at British Aerospace at Samlesbury, will be giving a series of slide shows at the town's central library, drawing from his vast collection of tram photographs and memorabilia.

But for readers of his book, he has devised a trip back in time along the precise lines the trams used to take - by arranging the 94 fascinating pictures in his book in geographical order so that, starting from the town centre, each section faithfully follows the separate routes of the long-gone tramway system which began with steam-power in 1881 and was briefly supplemented by genuine horsepower before relying on electricity for its final 50 years. It is, for instance, on the Preston New Road route that we find an open-top tram car progressing in the 1920s along a stretch of Victoria Street that was to vanish in the 1960s. With the town's old market square in the foreground, the tram is seen in front of the imposing Reform Club building with the grand frontage of the Crown Hotel prominent at the left of the picture while the town-centre provisions stores - with still-familiar names like Maypole, Altham's and the British and Argentine Meat Company - occupy the row leading to the junction with Ainsworth Street at the right.

On the Church route, in 1948, were the line approaches the railway bridge on Blackburn Road, near Blythe's chemical works, we catch a rare glimpse of the tramways water cart being towed behind an open-top car. The cart, which usually covered the whole network on Sunday mornings, was used to clean out the tracks.

The boy on the bicycle at the left of the picture is the then 11-year-old Jim Halsall - whose tram-buff research has now lasted 20 years.

The distinguished group pictured outside the Commercial Hotel in town-centre Accrington in June, 1900, where a Blackburn tramcar - far from free from advertising material - stands behind a flag-flying Accrington steam locomotive, was gathered for a unique occasion in East Lancashire tramways history.

It was the one and only occasion when a tramcar travelled there and back on the whole 21-mile length of the longest same-gauge "run" in the country - from Bull Hill, Darwen, through Blackburn, Accrington, Haslingden and Rawtenstall to Bacup. It was supposed to be a feasibility study by East Lancashire's neighbouring tramways undertakings of a through-service linking the towns, but it was more of a civic junket for councillors and municipal officials since it included what the Northern Daily Telegraph described as a "substantial snack at Accrington at noon" for the travellers and, with other interruptions for topping up the steam loco with coal and water, the time for the one-way journey was a protracted four and a half hours. Nothing came of the idea - probably because the switch to electric drive, begun the year before by Blackburn tramways and then in the immediate offing for Darwen's, was signalling the end of a standard system along the mooted through-route although tramways steam traction did not disappear altogether in East Lancashire until 1909.

But when tram travel came to an end in East Lancashire 50 years ago, left behind was an argument that lingers still - over the actual date that the region's last tram ran.

For though it departed from Blackburn Boulevard shortly after 11.30 pm that 1949 night with transport committee chairman Coun Robert Weir at the helm and councillors, officials and past and present tramways employees with over 40 years' service as passengers, many maintain that it was after midnight when it disappeared into the depot at Intack 1U miles on - as Coun Weir was held up by autograph hunters and the tram was slowed by the track being strewn with pennies placed by the crowd to be crushed by its wheels as souvenirs of the occasion.

But a stone's throw away from the depot where Tram No 74 met its demise, Blackburn "trams" run regularly still - on a model layout that Jim has built in a former bedroom at his Accrington Road home.

Even so, it's a second-class substitute for the real thing, as far as he's concerned.

"What a great pity that none of these fines trams was preserved," he says.

*Blackburn Tram Rides by Jim Halsall (Landy Publishing), £6.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.