Can you help identify these photos?
← Can you help identify these photos?
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Standard-gauge track, so that rules out Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield and many Lancashire towns. The shawled lady suggests a mill town. No sign of traction pole erections or preparation so could it be a horse/steam tram line (unless it is somewhere on the Mexborough & Swinton system which used the Dolter surface-contact system)?
The imposing building centre right has a faded painted advert on its gable end. The wording is very difficult to enlarge but it includes the words wine and spirit, and at the bottom “Holme Ale”. As most beers in this period were very localised this may help to pin down the location.
I worked on that but there’s nothing on the internet about “Holme Ales”.
I share the views that it is somewhere in the Pennines because of the stone houses but I can’t put a finger on just where – the “terminal stub” arrangement suggests a steam tramway (substantial base to support stationary loco) and as mentioned standard gauge ones were not common. Doncaster can be ruled out – the rail is not of the unusual type used there.
“Holme Ales” perhaps places it somewhere in the Huddersfield area? Certainly pictures on the Huddersfield Passenger Transport Group’s website http://www.jsh1949.co.uk show trams on single track sections (and also quotes three as being doubled in 1924).
Further, Huddersfield had steam trams – as suggested by John Hibbert – before electrifying from 1901 onwards.