120 Years Since the Opening of the Hastings and District Electric Tramway

31st July 1905 saw the public opening of the first phase of the Hastings and District Electric Tramway. This brought trams to the streets of Hastings exactly five years after approval was granted by Parliament. A second phase, linking neighbouring St. Leonards-on-Sea with nearby Bexhill opened nearly a year later. It was not until December 1906 that the two sections of the tramway connecting Hastings and St. Leonards along the seafront were finally united.

The reason for the delay was a well-resourced and effective campaign by local influential people who objected to the seafront line, which they saw as a disfigurement of their attractive seaside town. The impasse was only resolved by a compromise agreement which permitted the tramway to go ahead but forbade the use of overhead cables along the seafront section.

This forced the tramway company to adopt an alternative method of traction known as the Dolter Stud power system, which involved the use of surface contact studs located between the tracks, which were temporarily energised by strong magnets carried by specially adapted tramcars as they passed over them. In response to the operational issues resulting from the combined use of contact studs and also the overhead power lines, the company designed a purpose-built vehicle that was equipped to enable maintenance crews to work on both the buried power studs and also at height on the overhead wires.

Once completed, the 3’ 6” gauge tramway was just under 20 miles long and was serviced by a fleet of 65 conventional double deck tramcars built by the Preston-based United Electric Car Company. They were turned out in a maroon, red and cream livery. The company was one of the first to recruit female tram conductors, and by 1916 their numbers had risen to 50.

Although the tramway proved profitable in its early years, the Dolter system was troublesome in operation and thought by many to be dangerous because of the risk that horses might be electrocuted. Indeed, this was the fate of a laundry van horse after treading on a power stud on 29th September 1910. Matters came to a head in 1913 when the Board of Trade gave notice that it would no longer be willing to licence it in the wake of similar operational issues encountered with Torquay’s similar Dolter stud system.

An alternative system, making use of a third conductor (or conduit) rail beneath the track bed had already been found unsuitable for coastal locations when trialled in Blackpool, so the company decided to convert all the Dolter trams to a hybrid petrol-electric form of traction in March 1914. This involved the installation of a petrol engine attached to a dynamo to generate the electric current needed to power the motors where overhead wiring was not available.

This was not a particularly satisfactory solution, as the motors were both noisy and smelly for tramcar passengers and passers-by alike. However, it lasted until April 1920 when the Corporation finally withdrew its opposition to the use of overhead wiring along the seafront. The conversion to overhead traction was completed by March 1921, but by this stage the tramway was beginning to experience increasing competition from motor buses.

The tramway company’s hopes that the Corporation might intervene to regulate such competition in return for a programme to modernise its tramcar fleet were dashed when the council applied, unsuccessfully, to obtain powers to run its own motorbuses. However, it did agree to the company’s proposal to convert the existing network to trolleybus operation and to also extend the network along new routes.

The first trolleybuses, made by Guy Motors, were introduced on 1st April 1928. The last trams were withdrawn on 15th May 1929, almost twenty-four years after they first entered service.

Two of the tramcars survived and were incorporated into a bungalow before being rescued and taken into preservation just as the bungalow was about to be demolished. A local preservation society is seeking to restore tramcar 56, which had been converted to operate on the Dolter Stud system, and also number 48.

With thanks to Museum Volunteer Jim Dignan for producing this article.

Image sources:
1, 5, 6, 7: National Tramway Museum.
2, 3, 4: Bexhill Museum: https://www.bexhillmuseum.org.uk/access-centre/bexhill-transport-and-engineering/barry-enefer-collections/the-tram-collection/trams-no-27-to-no-42/