Operation
The first tramcar services started on 4 July 1913, only 5 months after linelaying had begun. This was between Loscoe and Kimberley, and the section to Cinderhill was opened a month later. The completed line from Cinderhill to Ripley opened on 1 Jan 1914 which made it possible to travel from Nottingham to Ripley, a distance of 15 miles (24 km), in 1 hr 40 mins. The trams ran 18 hours a day, except for Sunday when the service was reduced. Fares were a penny a mile. Workmen boarding before 8 am were able to obtain return tickets at single prices, while colliers journeying to and from the pits were charged a penny regardless of the length of their journey. The first trams left the depot at 4.30 am, while the last tram, 'The Flyer', left Nottingham at 11pm with limited stops only.
It was, by reputation, the most dangerous tramcar service in the British Isles, due to the length of its route, and the gradients it negotiated. The line was the subject of a short story by D. H. Lawrence: There is in the North a single-line system of tramcars which boldly leaves the county town and plunges off into the black, industrial countryside . . . . . This, the most dangerous tram-service in England, as the authorities themselves declare, with pride, is entirely conducted by girls, and driven by rash young men, or else by invalids who creep forward in terror.
In 1916, the company also took over the Ilkeston Corporation Tramways, but the routes of the two companies never joined (and being different gauges, this seemed an unlikely proposition).
Read more about this topic: Nottinghamshire And Derbyshire Tramways Company
Famous quotes containing the word operation:
“An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique and consequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known.”
—Henri Bergson (1859–1941)
“Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.”
—Francis Bacon (1560–1626)