War Trams

[Guest tintin]

I was torn where to put this - home and other also suggested themselves

I have just read an interesting book "Trams and Trolleybuses in Ilford" in it I learnt of the war tram.

In about November 1915 an RE Officer arrived at the Ilford Council Tram Depot to requisition cars No.14 and 16 to form part of a War Office plan to form two rings of searchlights around London to combat zeppelins.

Under RE supervision council staff removed all the seats from the open top decks and installed a 120cm searchlight at one end and a sheet steel shelter for the operators at the other. Seats were removed from the lower deck which was divided in two with electrical apparatus to drive the light at one end and the other end living quarters for the crew. The lower windows were boarded up.

The crews lived at the tram depot and every night the trams drove out to the termini at Barkingside and Chadwell Heath. These posts were both outside police stations so they could use the Met. Police telephone system. Each day a wagon turned up at the tram depot with the troops rations and every third day an ammunition wagon.The car was armed with a Lewis Gun. Council Staff maintained the tram.

There was a similar unit with the Croydon Corporation Tramways for South London and six units to cover North and West London. The North and West London units were manned by men of the Tyneside Electrical Engineers who had been South Shields and Tynemouth Tram Drivers in peacetime.

I have to say I was well impressed with the ingenuity of this concept - mobile and with its own electricity supply!

Does anyone know what units manned the other trams? Do any pictures survive of a war tram? What Electrical Engineer outfits existed - I know there were London as well as Tyneside EE. What other roles did they have?

[MartinWills]

Here is a small (& poorish) scan of a pic of a model of one of the Ilford Trams which gives an idea of how they looked.

I believe that London was the only area where trams were used for searchlight purposes. It is worth remembering that power was sometimes turned off at night for maintenance purposes so the use of the trams would have restricted routine maintenance. In addition in the event of an air raid damage may well have occurred to the overhead causing the supply to the tram to fail.

In other towns trams were used as recruiting tools and I believe that there was at least one mobile recruiting office in a northern town.

[Guest tintin]

Thanks,

I am very impressed with the model, is it your own or from a museum?

I have seen recruiting trams for many boroughs and Glasgow had the Tramways Battalion in the HLI

[MartinWills]

The model is by that well-known tramway modeller David Voice.

The Manchester City Battalions book (see numerous other threads) lists many Manchester Tramways-men who joined up, though they didn't quite qualify for their own battalion.

The war saw the start of the employment of women as clippies, and also in some cases as drivers.

Anyone have any other photos of WW1 trams to post?