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Stalybridge, Hyde, Mossley & Dukinfield Tramways & Electricity Board (SHMD) was a public transport and electricity supply organisation formed by Act of the British Parliament in August 1901. It was a joint venture between the borough councils of Stalybridge, Hyde, Mossley and Dukinfield. The system was officially opened on 21 May 1904.
At its inception, the scheme included 21 route miles of tramway and a fleet of forty tramcars. The network was later extended to 27 route miles with a fleet of sixty tramcars. The rails were rolled by Bolckow, Vaughan & Co, Middlesbrough. The points and crossings were made by Hadfield's Steel Foundry Co, Sheffield. The main tram shed was on Park Road, Stalybridge adjacent to the Tame Valley generating station. Smaller tram sheds were also built in Hyde and Mossley.
The British Westinghouse Co was the lead contractor for the first forty tram cars, supplying much of their electrical and mechanical equipment. The car bodies were sub contracted to the British Electric Car Co, Trafford Park, with bogies from the McGuire Manufacturing Co, Bury and wheel sets from the British Griffin Chilled Iron Co, Barrow in Furness.
The Tame Valley generating station consisted of three Yates and Thom, 815 hp, vertical triple expansion steam engines. Each engine drove a Dick, Kerr & Co. 500 kW 60 pole alternator at 80 RPM, giving a three-phase output of 6,000 V at 40 Hz. The station's six Lancashire boilers were supplied by Tinker, Shenton & Co, of Hyde. Most of the electrical switchgear was supplied by Witting, Eborall & Co. Power from the station was distributed at 6,000 V via specially made three-core cables drawn through glazed earthenware underground conduits. Each of the four SHMD towns had its own substation consisting of two synchronous motor-generators, each rated at 200 kW, converting the 6,000 V three-phase input into an output of 525 V DC to feed the overhead tram wires and 460 V (±230 V) three-wire DC for lighting circuits. The Tame Valley generating station remained in use until 1932, after which the building was used as a workshop and stores. In 1926, the new Hartshead Power Station was opened by the SHMD board.
In 1936, the organisation's name was changed to the Stalybridge, Hyde, Mossley & Dukinfield Joint Transport & Electricity Board due to most of its tramways being replaced by first trolley buses then motor buses. The last SHMD tram ran in 1945. For a number of years after this, the main bus routes were operated by electrically powered “trolley buses”, which did not run on rails but on rubber-tyred wheels and obtained their power from a pair of overhead cables, each bus having two catenary poles held up against the overhead cables by springs. These poles would frequently jump off the rails and the conductor would be obliged to jump off, retrieve a long bamboo pole from a sheath on the side of the trolley bus and use it to replace the contacts on the overhead cables. The SHMD Board owned the trolleybus overhead within its area but did not operate any trolleybuses, which were provided by the neighboroughing undertakings of Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Corporation. The board continued to operate motor buses on routes that had never been served by tram. In 1948, the SHMD electricity interests were nationalised, with the board's electricity distribution assets being incorporated into Norweb. The Hartshead Power Station became part of the British Electricity Authority, the predecessor of the Central Electricity Generating Board, and remained in use until 1979. Norweb continued to use the former Tame Valley generating station building as a maintenance depot until 1984, after which it was sold to Beck & Politzer who continue to use it as a workshop. The Grade II listed Thorn House, the former SHMD head office near to Stalybridge bus station, was used for many years by Norweb as an area office and showroom before being sold and converted into flats.
Following the nationalisation of its electricity interests SHMD continued to operate bus services until 1969, when it was absorbed into SELNEC. However, its origins in the electrical transport and electricity generation to power the trams and trolleys meant that the affectionate name of “Joint Board” was not lost entirely. The standard livery of the SHMD fleet was green and cream.
A tram is a type of urban rail transit. It consists of a rail vehicle, either alone or coupled in a multiple train unit, traveling on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport are called tramways or simply trams/streetcars. Many recently built tramways use the contemporary term light rail.
An overhead line or overhead wire is an electrical cable that is used to transmit electrical energy to electric locomotives, trolleybuses or trams. The generic term used by the International Union of Railways for the technology is overhead line. It is known variously as overhead catenary, overhead contact line (OCL), overhead contact system (OCS), overhead equipment (OHE), overhead line equipment, overhead lines (OHL), overhead wiring (OHW), traction wire, and trolley wire.
Mossley (/ˈmɒzli/) is a town and civil parish in Tameside, Greater Manchester, England. It is located in the upper Tame Valley and the foothills of the Pennines, 3 miles (4.8 km) south-east of Oldham and 8.9 miles (14.3 km) east of Manchester.
A trolley pole is a tapered cylindrical pole of wood or metal, used to transfer electricity from a "live" (electrified) overhead wire to the control and the electric traction motors of a tram or trolley bus. It is a type of current collector. The use of overhead wire in a system of current collection is reputed to be the 1880 invention of Frank J. Sprague, but the first working trolley pole was developed and demonstrated by Charles Van Depoele, in autumn 1885.
There have been two separate generations of trams in London, from 1860 to 1952 and from 2000 to the present. There were no trams at all in London between 1952 and 2000.
Conduit current collection is an obsolete system that was used by some electric tramways to pass current to streetcars via a "conduit", a small tunnel under the roadway. Modern systems fall under the term ground-level power supply.
A bow collector is one of the three main devices used on tramcars to transfer electric current from the wires above to the tram below. While once very common in continental Europe, it was replaced by the pantograph or the trolley pole, itself often later replaced by the pantograph.
The Great Orme Tramway is a cable-hauled 3 ft 6 in gauge tramway in Llandudno in north Wales. Open seasonally from late March to late October, it takes over 200,000 passengers each year from Llandudno Victoria Station to just below the summit of the Great Orme headland. From 1932 onwards it was known as the Great Orme Railway, reverting to its original name in 1977.
The history of trams, streetcars, or trolleys began in the early nineteenth century. It can be divided up into several discrete periods defined by the principal means of motive power used.
The stud contact system is an obsolete ground-level power supply system for electric trams. Power supply studs were set in the road at intervals and connected to a buried electric cable by switches operated by magnets on the tramcars. Current was collected from the studs by a "skate" or "ski collector" under the tramcar. The system was popular for a while in the early 1900s but soon fell out of favour because of the unreliability of the magnetic switches, largely due to friction and rapid corrosion affecting its cast iron moving components.
A current collector is a device used in trolleybuses, trams, electric locomotives and EMUs to carry electric power (current) from overhead lines, electric third rails, or ground-level power supplies to the electrical equipment of the vehicles. Those for overhead wires are roof-mounted devices, those for rails are mounted on the bogies.
Hartshead Power Station was a coal-fired power station situated at Heyrod, Greater Manchester in North West England.
Between 1901 and 1949 Manchester Corporation Tramways was the municipal operator of electric tram services in Manchester, England. At its peak in 1928, the organisation carried 328 million passengers on 953 trams, via 46 routes, along 292 miles (470 km) of track.
The South Lancashire trolleybus system once served towns in South Lancashire, England, including Atherton, Bolton, Swinton and Leigh and St Helens. Opened on 3 August 1930, it replaced the South Lancashire Tramways network.
Torquay Tramways operated electric street trams in Torquay, Devon, England, from 1907. They were initially powered by the unusual Dolter stud-contact electrification, but in 1911 was converted to more conventional overhead-line supply. The line was extended into neighbouring Paignton in 1911 but the whole network was closed in 1934.
Llanelly and District Electric Tramways operated a standard gauge tramway service in Llanelli, Wales, between 1908 and 1933. It was the successor to a 3 ft gauge horse tramway, which ran from 1882 until 1908. A complex series of negotiations took place in the early 1900s, resulting in the horse tramway being converted to an electric tramway. Standard gauge horse trams were run initially, until the company completed North Dock power station, which supplied electricity to the tramway. Two of the employees who worked on the construction went on to found Balfour Beatty.
The Perugia Tramway opened in 1899, which was the same year as that in which electric street lighting came to the city. The purpose of the Tramway was to link the historical city centre with the city's railway station, some 3 km away down the hill.
Trams existed in Sri Lanka's capital Colombo from 1899 to 1960.
The history of trams in Ashton-under-Lyne date back to 1878, through the Manchester Carriage & Tramways Company. These trams were horse-drawn trams and began operation in 1881, between Stalybridge & Ashton-under-Lyne. The route began at Stalybridge's town hall, stopping at Ashton-Under-Lyne and terminating at the Snipe Inn at Ashton-Under-Lyne/Audenshaw boundary line. The Stalybridge, Hyde, Mossley & Dukinfield Tramways & Electricity Board provided tram operations in the wider Tameside region.
The Glossop Tramway was a 4.5-mile (7.2 km) long passenger tramway service connecting the mill towns of Glossop and Hadfield in Derbyshire, England. It was authorised by the Board of Trade in 1901 and was opened in 1903 on a gauge of 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in. It was closed in 1927, with the branch to Whitfield closing in 1919.
