History
Horse drawn buses operated in Nottingham from 1848. The Nottingham and District Tramways Company Limited opened its first routes in 1878 with horse drawn trams, and experimented with steam traction a few years later. The company was taken over by Nottingham Corporation Tramways in 1898; electrification followed, with the first electric trams operating in January 1901 and within two years over 100 trams were in service on eight lines. The first motorbuses were introduced in 1906.
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The Nottingham trolleybus system was inaugurated in 1927. By 1930, a number of routes had been converted from trams to trolleybuses. A new bus depot was opened on Parliament Street in June 1929 and is still in use today.
By 1935 the trolleybus fleet had reached its peak at 106 vehicles, making it the largest fleet in the country. The last tram ran in September 1936. World War II brought reduced services, economy measures (including diluting diesel with creosote) and blackout screens on vehicles. Before the war some diesel-engined buses were introduced, although large deliveries of diesel-engined buses did not take place until after the war. The advent of diesel services enabled the last petrol-engined buses to be withdrawn.
By the end of the 1950s, trolleybuses were in decline, the last new trolleybus joining the fleet in 1952 reaching a maximum fleet of 155 vehicles. The first one-man operated bus appeared in 1951. In 1954 guide dogs were allowed to remain on the lower saloon of all vehicles and heaters were installed in all cabs in 1956. Trolleybuses disappeared between April 1965 and July 1966, and the West Bridgford UDC Transport undertaking came under Nottingham's control in 1968. One-man operation started to come into force in January 1970 and by 1977 nearly all services were one-man operated. 1974 saw a name change to City of Nottingham Transport and by 1976 an all-time peak of 494 operated vehicles was reached.
The deregulation of the industry under the Transport Act occurred in 1986 and Nottingham City Transport Limited was formed. In 1988 the Company purchased Stevenson's Bus Services at Ilkeston and formed a subsidiary company Erewash Valley Services Ltd; these services were integrated with the main company in 1990. In 1991, South Notts was purchased for a pound, giving a main route from Nottingham to Loughborough and a garage at Gotham. In 1997, Pathfinder (Newark) Limited was bought, giving a presence in the north of the county. Fleet names are retained within the company but both South Notts and Pathfinder liveries are now extinct, South Notts bus 490 being the last bus repainted into South Notts' original livery. Nottingham City Council remained 100% owners, despite many offers to buy NCT, until 11 May 2001, when 5% of the ordinary shares, and convertible preference shares to a possible value of another 13% of ordinary shares, were issued to Transdev plc, a member (along with NCT) of the Arrow consortium. This was formed to enable the tram system Nottingham Express Transit (NET) to be created. NET has returned trams to the streets of Nottingham after an absence of several decades, and has proved to be very popular with the travelling public.
Read more about this topic: Nottingham City Transport
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