The City and Kingswood Line

This book covers the full sixty-seven year history of Bristol’s tramway system; from the early tentative days of horse-drawn trams, through the experimental days of using steam power, to the ultimate environmentally friendly electric trams that in 1895 started to run from Old Market through to Kingswood and which ended Bristol’s involvement with trams ironically on the same line as a direct result of enemy action in 1941. With Bristol Council’s desire to restrict an independent company’s ability to make a profit out of their use of the roadway, there was a clause in the joint arrangement that every seven years, the Council had the right to purchase the whole tramway system at its original cost price, thus restricting the Tramway Company’s desire to invest in either expanding the system, and/or improving the capital equipment. Accordingly the 1895 designed cars remained throughout the forty-six years of electrification, and Bristol had the mis-guided honour of having the largest fleet of open top trams in the country. In fact when five new cars were built in 1920, they were constructed to the original design, even though by then other cities had already added a roof and a driver’s screen to most of their old cars.