Trams and Buses

Railways were the main transport related interest of my father - that much is made clear by the huge number of railway related photo's in the collection. However trams, and to a lesser extent buses, also seem to have been of interest to him. I know that a great many people today like to see such pictures so I've included this section for them. There is also plenty here for those who want to see more of old Brum!

We were always a South Birmingham family. When my mother and father met she lived in Kings Heath and he lived in Selly Park. After they married Cotteridge became their home. When we moved back to Birmingham in 1969 we settled in Stirchley. Even today, much of what is north of Spaghetti Junction is a mystery to me... As a result of this you will find a strong bias to the south in the photo's.

I noticed that many of the pictures were taken on July 4th 1953. This didn't mean anything to me but a tram enthusiast got in touch to explain the importance of this date - it was the last day that trams ran in Birmingham! Peter has been kind enough to provide detailed notes about the pictures which I'm sure will be of great interest to lots of people.

When I created this page I took the decision to just show large versions of the old pictures rather than the 'before and after' approach because I knew it would take a while to provide current pictures of the locations. Thankfully, working on my book gave me the opportunity to travel around the city so many of the pictures do now have modern equivalents. Where a modern version is available a pop-up picture is used. To find out if there is a contemporary photo just move your mouse cursor over the old picture and you should see a little label appear saying, "Click for modern view". An example of this is the Tram 839 picture on the City Centre page. If you don't see the label on this picture then use Google to search for your browser name and the word 'tooltips' to see how to enable this feature for your web browser.

Do you like this site? Then you may be interested in my book...

To try and reduce download times I have divided the photographs into various sections. Please select the link of interest.

City Centre	Various Locations
North of City Centre	Lichfield Rd, Salford Bridge, Gravelly Hill, Pype Hayes, Holly Lane
Stratford Road	Along and close to Stratford Road
Pershore Road	Along and close to Pershore Road
Bristol Road	Along and close to Bristol Road
Buses and Trams in Colour	Colour slides of Buses, Trolleybuses and Trams in the 1950's and 1960's
Trams Outside Birmingham	Llandudno and Liverpool trams pictured in 1955