Leeds Tramways Company No. 107

If a prize were to be awarded to the tramcar in the museum’s collection with the shortest period of active public service, the winner would surely be Leeds horse car no. 107, which operated in service for a bare three years. It was one of ten double deck horse cars that were purchased in 1898. This was four years after the corporation had taken over the operation of the city’s tramway and launched an ambitious programme to replace the existing horse and steam tram operations with a fully electrified service, a process that was completed on 1 April 1902.

During this intervening period, the tramway was described as being in a ‘state of chaos’ as much of the existing horse car fleet was life-expired and yet there were insufficient electric tramcars to provide a full replacement service. Indeed, much work was still required in order to complete the track-work and overhead wiring. Moreover, three routes in the south of the city were incapable of being converted to electric traction until a railway bridge could be rebuilt to enable it to carry the much heavier electric tramcars.

Since this process was not completed until 1901, a few additional horse trams were ordered from G F Milnes as a stop-gap measure pending the completion of the necessary infrastructure and the arrival of the new electric trams. These were among the last horse trams to be constructed in Britain and, as such, incorporated a number of innovations including fewer windows in the lower saloon – four large ones instead of the 5 or even 7 smaller ones that typified earlier vehicles – and transverse ‘garden seats’ for the upper deck in place of the more traditional ‘knifeboard’ arrangement in which passengers sat back to back down the centre of the tram.

Despite these improvements it is easy to see why even the most modern horse trams would soon be rendered obsolete by electrically propelled tramcars. Their maximum capacity of 34 passengers – 18 on the upper deck and 16 in the saloon – compared very unfavourably with the fifty-plus passengers that even the earliest double deck trams were able to convey at much greater speed. Moreover, three horses were required in order to pull the laden tramcar and a fourth was added when particularly steep sections were encountered such as Woodhouse Lane. The cost of feeding and stabling large numbers of horses that were only capable of covering short distances before needing a rest was another major drawback.

So it is not altogether surprising that Leeds horse tram 107 enjoyed a very brief operational lifespan. The tram was initially allocated to the Dewsbury Road route and by April 1901 it was one of only 14 horse cars still licensed for service. Gradually the few remaining horse tram routes were converted to electric operation, the last one being the Corn Exchange and Whitehall Road route. The final horse trams ran on this line on 13th October 1901 without any closing ceremony and were replaced the following day by new electric tramcars.

The Corporation were hoping to sell the remaining nearly new vehicles for not less than £5 each (compared with a purchase price of £160 just three years earlier), but with most other tramways also converting to electric traction they evidently did not find any takers. Instead, the bulk of the cars were either sold off as caravans or for scrap, leaving just 2 or 3 that were set aside for possible preservation and stored in the old stables at Hunslet depot.

However, a new general manager – William Chamberlain, who took office in 1926 – ordered their destruction. Car no. 107 escaped this fate, for shortly after its withdrawal it had been carefully converted to serve as a static mess hut for the council’s Highways Department. When it was eventually declared redundant in the 1920s, it was given to an employee and it ended up in the East End park area of Leeds, where it remained until 1977.

During the intervening period it was used as a summerhouse and even, for a while, as living accommodation for the owner’s nephew and his wife.  In later years, following a sale of the property, it had provided a home for the new family’s collection of pet mice.

Eventually the tram body was spotted by a member of the Leeds Transport Historical Society and identified as the last remaining Leeds horse tram, whereupon the current owners generously donated it to the LTHS, who moved it on the back of a Ford Transit in April 1977 to a secure storage site in East Leeds.

It was to be another 28 years before the LTHS were in a position to begin the long and complex task of restoring the tramcar to its former glory, a process which began in 2005 and was finally completed in 2013. Following a launch event at the Middleton Railway site in Leeds, the tramcar was then relocated to its new home at the National Tramway Museum in Crich.

Although there are a number of other horse trams in the national collection, Leeds 107 is the only fully restored double deck horse tram apart from Cardiff 21, which is on temporary loan only.