Pages

Bournemouth Corporation Tramways

Bournemouth Corporation Tramways served the town from 1902 until the closure of the system in 1936. The complete system had a route length of about twenty six kilometres, and included the Poole & District Electric Tramway which the Bournemouth Corporation took a lease on in 1905. Originally the tramway used a mixture of overhead and conduit electric collection though later switched to entirely overhead. The tramway at it's peak had one hundred and fifty two tramcars of which all but one were double decker. The tramway was to 1, 067mm gauge unlike the majority of tramways though the same as neighbouring systems.

Information for standard bogie cars
Number built: 86
Built: 1902-1926
Builder: G.F. Milnes, Brush, United Electric Car Company
Motor: 2 Westinghouse 226N electric motors (DC OHLE)
Power: 80 hp (60 kW)

Eighty six of the tramways were standard bogie cars which were built over a twenty-four year period. Although there were some detail differences such as with the seating and stairs the latter batch of tramcars were not very different to the original ones built by G.F. Milnes [1]. The preserved tramcar Number 85 was one of a batch of ten built in 1914 by the United Electric Car Company. It survived the end of the Bournemouth system being one of ten tramcars sold to the Llandudno & Colwyn Bay Electric Railway Company and continued to work there until 1956.
Number 85 preserved at Crich

Number 85 is preserved as it was in Bournemouth service

Interior

[1] R.W. Rush, British Electric Tramcar Design 1885-1950 (Oxford Publishing, 1976) p. 51