OLDHAM CORPORATION TRANSPORT Oldham Corporation Transport COLIN REEVE
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OLDHAM CORPORATION TRANSPORT OLDHAM CORPORATION Oldham Corporation Transport COLIN REEVE 128 PIKES LANE GLOSSOP DERBYSHIRE SK13 8EH (01457 861508 E-MAIL [email protected] INTERNET www.venturepublications.co.uk ISBN 978 190530 4462 £16.95 Super Prestige Number 25 Colin Reeve The current Venture Publications range of road transport titles is shown below. FREEPOST SK2162 They are available from all good bookshops or in case of difficulty, post free in the Glossop UK from MDS Book Sales whose address can be found on the inside back cover of SK13 8YF this book. ( 01457 861508 credit cards welcome Alexander Y Type Story 1961-2011 £26.00 Bodywork by Massey £25.00 Great Northern Railway of Ireland Road Motor Service 19 £30.00 Hello Coastal .. Victoria Coach Station £25.00 Mechanical Horses £13.95 Northern Counties of Wigan £27.50 Potteries Motor Traction - A Retrospective £25.00 Prestige Series No.38 Bedwas & Machen £7.95 Prestige Series No.39 Gelligaer UDC £9.95 SELNEC - A 40th Anniversary Celebration £9.95 Super Prestige 10 Lancashire United £18.95 Super Prestige 11 Ashton & Manchester Trolleybuses £16.95 Super Prestige 13 Bolton Corporation £17.95 Super Prestige 14 Stockport Corporation £17.95 Super Prestige 15 Highland Omnibuses £17.95 Super Prestige 17 Northern Roadways £14.95 Super Prestige 18 West Mon £15.95 Super Prestige 19 Staffordshire Independents £16.95 Super Prestige 20 Lytham St Annes Corporation & Its Successors £16.95 Super Prestige 21 Rochdale Corporation Transport £15.95 Super Prestige 22 Ellen Smith £15.95 Super Prestige 23 Shropshire Independents £16.95 Super Prestige 24 Morecambe & Lancaster £15.95 The Impact of Atlanteans in the South and West £25.00 125 Golden Miles - Blackpool Trams 125 Years £9.95 Super Prestige series Front Cover Number 461, a Northern Counties-bodied Leyland PD2, is shown passing the store of a well known name which has disappeared from all our town centres. Both Leyland and C&A would have been known by many in the early The Super Prestige Series from contains numerous volumes covering road 1960s when this photograph was taken. (STA) transport across the country. The selection shown above are those most local to Oldham and are all still in print and available from your local bookshop or direct from MDS Book Sales Rear Cover at the address above. For a copy of our full catalogue including details of all the titles in the The Oldham Corporation Coat of Arms. (STA) series contact us at the address above or email [email protected] The Super Prestige Series OLDHAM Colin Reeve This free edition is provided by MDS Book Sales during the coronavirus lockdown. There’s no charge and it may be distributed as you wish. If you’d like to make a donation to our charity of choice - The Christie, Europe’s largest specialist cancer centre - there’s a link here. © 2012 Venture Publications Ltd ISBN 978 1905 304 462 All rights reserved. Except for normal review purposes no part of this book maybe reproduced or utilised in any form by any means, electrical or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by an information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of Venture Publications Ltd, Glossop, Derbyshire, SK13 8EH. Acknowledgements hen I was asked to write a book on Oldham Transport I jumped at the chance as I have been associated with the area in one way or another for most of my life. As a schoolboy I travelled Won service 12 between Middleton and Boundary Park to watch Oldham Athletic and by North Western to Diggle where we lived for a short time. Then later as a scheduler at Manchester Corporation I worked with my opposite numbers at Oldham on joint services and at weekends drove red buses deep into Oldham territory to exotic destinations such as Waterhead, Greenfield and Newhey. In writing this book I have had a great deal of help from many people. Thanks go especially to David Bielby and Keith Hampton for sharing their extensive knowledge of North Western operations in Oldham and Saddleworth and correcting some of my misconceptions and to John Holmes for his extensive personal knowledge of Oldham’s operations in the post-war years. John Holmes, Geoff Lumb, Tony Moyes and John Senior supplied innumerable photographs from their collections and George Turnbull allowed me the run of the Greater Manchester Transport Museum archives, so much so that I had far more pictures than I could use. For this I apologise. Thanks also to the staff at the Oldham Local Studies Library and Archive who helped me to delve into the minutes of the Tramways and Passenger Transport Committees and sub-Committees. Colin Reeve Rochdale February 2012 Photo credits AM Tony Moyes CR Colin Reeve DBC David Bielby Collection JAS John Senior JJH John Holmes MMT Greater Manchester Museum of Transport OLS Oldham Local Studies and Archive RLS Rochdale Library Services STA Senior Transport Archive 2 CONTENTS 1 Oldham 4 2 Horses and steam 6 3 Electric trams 11 The 1899 Act. The next steps. Conversions. The network grows. Beyond the boundaries. Through running. The 1909 Act. The Grains Bar saga. The First World War, The Post-War years. The 1925 Act. Trolleybuses. The writing on the wall. Decline and fall. Wartime and after. 4 Early Buses 34 A faltering start. Holt and North Western. A new beginning. The growing network. The express services. Buses for trams. More changes. 5 The Turbulent Thirties 52 A great step forward. The 1930 Road Traffic Act. The SELNEC Scheme. Consolidation. Hard times. Tramway abandonment. The gathering storm. 6 The Second World War 66 Oldham at war. The darkest hour. Light at the end of the tunnel. 7 The Post-War Years 72 Co-ordination and Nationalisation. Getting restarted. More growth. New buses. 8 The Frugal Fifties 80 Financial problems. Fine-tuning. More new buses. 9 The Swinging Sixties 88 A new look. More changes. Oldham in crisis. One-man operation. The 1968 Transport Act. 10 Life after Oldham 100 Into SELNEC. Greater Manchester. The present day. 11 Gallery 108 3 Introduction Oldham rose to prominence during the late eighteenth century as a centre of textile OLDHAM manufacturing and associated engineering industries, rapidly becoming one of the most important centres of the cotton industry in he town of Oldham stands on a windy England. At its zenith Oldham was said to be the hilltop on the edge of the Pennines most productive cotton spinning mill town in the Tapproximately seven miles north-east of world, spinning more cotton than the whole of Manchester city centre and some 500 feet above France and Germany put together, although with it. The name is said to derive from the Norse ‘Ald the decline in heavy industry it has moved towards Holm’, meaning ‘High Hill’, which is certainly the service sector and is now largely residential, appropriate. Oldham has little early history and lying as it does within easy commuting distance before the Industrial Revolution was not much of Manchester. more than a handful of small settlements scattered Oldham became a Parliamentary Borough along the former Roman road, now the A62 from in 1832, a Municipal Borough in 1849 and Manchester to York, through what was then a County Borough 40 years later. In 1974 it known as Oldham Below to distinguish it from became a Metropolitan Borough within the then the upper town known as Oldham Above. Metropolitan County of Greater Manchester, Probably the town’s most famous son was absorbing the ring of small towns around it that Hugh Oldham, born about 1452, who became had always looked to Oldham for their services, Bishop of Exeter and in 1515 founded Manchester but also including the district of Saddleworth in Grammar School. The Oldham family arms, the West Riding of Yorkshire whose inhabitants depicting three owls, was adopted both by the were so loyal to the white rose that rather than school and later by the new Borough of Oldham, shop in nearby Oldham they would often take an interesting play on words as the town was long the North Western or the Hanson bus across known in the Lancashire dialect as Owldham. Standedge to Huddersfield. Oldham is now a This view of the Market Place during the First World War shows tram 103, which has now received a top cover, just arriving from Manchester on its way to Waterhead. The policeman on the left and the inspector on the right are both watching the woman cross the track. The line to the left goes down George Street to the Star Inn. (STA) 4 Unitary Authority with a population of some opened in 1804 and skirted the town through 217,000 at the last census. Chadderton a couple of miles to the west. The Before the Industrial Revolution highways Huddersfield Narrow Canal, on which work had were little more than cart tracks, often all but started in 1794, finally opened in 1811, running impassable in bad weather, but with booming up the valley of the River Tame from Ashton- industry and a growing population improved under-Lyne through Mossley, Uppermill and the transport links were becoming ever more Standedge Tunnel. important and this need led to the creation of The Manchester and Leeds Railway opened a turnpikes, roads which were improved and branch from its main line at Middleton Junction kept repaired out of tolls collected at gates or to Werneth in 1842, the 1 in 27 gradient making Turn Pikes along the route. From the middle this the steepest conventional railway line in of the 18th century Oldham became the hub of the country.