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Hurst, Nelson and Company Ltd was a railway rolling stock manufacturer based in Motherwell, Scotland. The company also built many railway wagons, as well as trams and trolleybus carosseries for several local authorities.
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Hurst, Nelson and Company Ltd was a railway rolling stock manufacturer based in Motherwell, Scotland. The company also built many railway wagons, as well as trams and trolleybus carosseries for several local authorities.
The company built the original trailer carriages for the Glasgow Subway. A batch of 24 four-wheeled vehicles were supplied in 1898. The wheels were of teak, with Bessemer steel tyres, and each had 24 seats, twelve along each side of the carriage. They were similar in style, although shorter than the gripper cars supplied by the Oldbury Railway Carriage and Wagon Company for the opening of the cable-hauled railway in 1896. They were not fitted with a mechanism for gripping the cable, nor did they have automatic brakes, and so relied on the brakes of the gripper cars in operation. Manual hand brakes were provided, and shackles were provided at each corner, so that they could be lowered down onto the tracks at the car sheds pits. Electric lighting was supplied by a jumper cable running from the adjacent gripper car, and the vehicles weighed 4.65 tons. Hurst Nelson displayed one of them at the Earl's Court exhibition centre in London. [1]
The company also supplied vehicles for the London Underground. In August 1905, they delivered two battery-electric locomotives, which were used for the construction of the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway, and subsequently for the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway. They were 50.5 feet (15.4 m) long, with a cab at both ends and a compartment behind one of the cabs, which housed braking and traction control equipment. 80 batteries, arranged as two rows of 40, occupied the central section of the vehicle, which was lower than the cabs. Chloride Electrical Storage Company supplied the batteries, which had to be charged at charging stations. The vehicles weighed 55 tons, and were not fitted with current collector shoes, since none of the rails were electrified during construction. [2]
Extensions and improvements to the District Railway (later the District line of the London Underground) in the early 1900s required additional rolling stock, and in 1910 Hurst Nelson received an order for 32 motor cars and 20 trailers, which were similar in both construction and appearance, and were known as C Stock. Traction control used a non-automatic electro-magnetic controller supplied by British Thomson-Houston Co., but the motors were to a new design, which included interpoles. They were the first use of such motors on the Underground, and probably in England. The cars were 49.5 feet (15.1 m) long, with double doors in the centre, and single doors at either end. Much of the bodywork was made of wood. There were some problems with the motor bogies, and 60 new bogies were provided between 1910 and 1922, although not all were for the Hurst Nelson vehicles, as the problem also affected the D Stock and E Stock, which had been supplied by other manufacturers in 1912 and 1914. The C stock trailer cars were subsequently modified at Acton Works to become motor cars in the 1928 Reconstruction Programme. [3]
The most notable example of Hurst Nelson rail vehicles still in service are the tramcars of the Great Orme Tramway. Seven tramcars were built for the Great Orme in 1902, [4] of which four remain in service today. [5] These vehicles are not preserved, as they have never ceased to be in revenue-earning service. With well over a century of use, they are the longest serving Hurst Nelson products.
A small number of trams built by Hurst Nelson, and subsequently withdrawn from service, are now in heritage preservation.
A number of Hurst Nelson railway wagons have been preserved on heritage railways, particularly from their tank wagon range. These include the following, listed in order of construction date, starting with the oldest.
A railroad car, railcar, railway wagon, railway carriage, railway truck, railwagon, railcarriage or railtruck, also called a train car, train wagon, train carriage or train truck, is a vehicle used for the carrying of cargo or passengers on a rail transport network. Such cars, when coupled together and hauled by one or more locomotives, form a train. Alternatively, some passenger cars are self-propelled in which case they may be either single railcars or make up multiple units.
Conservation and restoration of rail vehicles aims to preserve historic rail vehicles.
Brush Traction was a manufacturer and maintainer of railway locomotives in Loughborough, England whose operations have now been merged into the Wabtec company's Doncaster UK operations.
The National Tramway Museum is a tram museum located at Crich, Derbyshire, England. The museum contains over 60 trams built between 1873 and 1982 and is set within a recreated period village containing a working pub, cafe, old-style sweetshop and tram depots. The museum's collection of trams runs through the village-setting with visitors transported out into the local countryside and back and is operated by the Tramway Museum Society, a registered charity.
The Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT) is a science and technology museum located in Western Springs, Auckland, New Zealand. It is located close to the Western Springs Stadium, Auckland Zoo and the Western Springs Park. The museum has large collections of civilian and military aircraft and other land transport vehicles. An ongoing programme is in place to restore and conserve items in the collections. This work is largely managed by volunteers but, since the passing of the Museum of Transport and Technology Act in 2000, has been supported by full-time professional museum staff. New public programmes and facilities now promote the collections.
A double-decker tram or double-deck tram is a tram that has two levels or decks. Some double-decker trams have open tops. Double-deck trams were once popular in some European cities, like Berlin and London, throughout the British Empire countries in the early half of the 20th century including Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington in New Zealand; Hobart, Tasmania in Australia and in parts of Asia. They are still in service or even newly introduced in Hong Kong, Alexandria, Oranjestad, Blackpool, Birkenhead, Franschhoek, Auckland and Douglas, mostly as heritage or tourist trams.
Cravens Railway Carriage and Wagon Company Limited was a railway rolling stock builder in the Darnall district of Sheffield, England. Founded by brothers named Craven and known as Craven Brothers, later Cravens Limited, it remained a family business until John Brown & Company acquired a controlling shareholding in 1919. Its name was changed back to Cravens Limited in 1954 when it finally became a wholly owned subsidiary of John Brown.
The Chesterfield and District Tramways Company and its successors ran a tramway system in the Derbyshire town of Chesterfield, England. The first horse-drawn line opened in 1882, and in 1897, the system was taken over by Chesterfield Corporation, who extended and electrified it in 1904 and 1905. Additional tramcars were purchased, but two had to be scrapped after a disastrous fire at the depot in 1916. The system suffered from a lack of maintenance as a result of reduced staffing levels during the First World War, and the trams were replaced by trolleybuses in 1927.
A tram engine is a steam locomotive specially built, or modified, to run on a street, or roadside, tramway track.
Glasgow Corporation Tramways were formerly one of the largest urban tramway systems in Europe. Over 1000 municipally-owned trams served the city of Glasgow, Scotland, with over 100 route miles by 1922. The system closed in 1962 and was the last city tramway in Great Britain.
Southampton Corporation Tramways were in operation from 1879 to 1949. They were initially horse-drawn, but latterly powered by electricity.
Leeds Corporation Tramways formerly served the city of Leeds, England. The original trams were horse-drawn, but the city introduced Britain's first overhead-powered electric trams in 1891, and by 1901, electrification had been completed. The tramway opened on 29 October 1891.
Edinburgh Corporation Tramways formerly served the City of Edinburgh, Scotland. The city used four-wheeled double-decked trams painted dark red (madder) and white – a livery still used by Lothian Buses and the modern light rail Edinburgh Trams.
The Kent & East Sussex Railway has hosted a variety of heritage rolling stock since the line was closed by British Railways in 1961.
The Bluebell Railway is a heritage line West Sussex and East Sussex in England.
London's Metropolitan Railway (MR) amalgamated with other underground railways, tramway companies and bus operators on 1 July 1933, to form the London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB); the MR became the Board's Metropolitan line.
The Blackpool and Fleetwood Tramroad operated a tramway service between Blackpool and Fleetwood from 1898 to 1920.
Blackpool Heritage Trams are a mixed fleet of restored vehicles that run on the Blackpool Tramway, which runs from Blackpool to Fleetwood on the Fylde Coast in Lancashire, England. The line dates back to 1885 and is one of the oldest electric tramways in the world. It is operated by Blackpool Transport (BT) and is the last surviving first-generation tramway in the United Kingdom. Excluding museums, it is one of only a few tramways in the world to still use double-decker trams.
