Your webmaster moved home in June 2015 and had to wait seven weeks for a broadband connection, consequently updates have just been piling up in my intray. But here we are with the latest batch of pictures for you to enjoy by clicking on the Update Button.

Also updated is the web links page which you might wish to visit as well. As ever, the best way to view this site is to use our Tour Guide who will take you sequentially through all our pages.

Early History of Glasgow Tram 488 in Preservation

Following a request from the Paris Transport Museum, Glasgow Corporation Transport donated standard tram 488 to this museum. It was thoroughly overhauled in 1960 but, following a serious fire at Dalmarnock depot, when fifty trams were destroyed in March 1961, it was returned to service and in fact was the last tram from Burnside on route 18. At the controls, for part of this historic journey on 3rd June 1961 was tram enthusiast Martin Jenkins.

For its outward journey to France, 488 was split into two parts - upper and lower deck; our picture shows the lower deck leaving Scotland via the River Clyde. When the Paris Museum took delivery of this precious vehicle, it was reassembled and was resident at their Malakoff premises. The Paris Transport Museum is known as AMTUIR and they have amassed a large number of historical vehicles. Their sites have changed location from time to time and because 488 was too high for one of the buildings it was split in two again. Some vehicles eventually had to be placed in store with London trolleybus 796 and Glasgow tram 488 being two of them.

An approach was made by the London Trolleybus Preservation Society to repatriate 796 and it returned to England on the 6th October 2010 and following restoration, now operates at the East Anglia Transport Museum. A rationalisation of AMTUIR's vehicles led to them offering 488 to the EATMS. This was accepted, but inquiries as to who might be able to restore it fell on stony ground as access to the warehouse where 488 was then stored could not be obtained and therefore quotes could not be given.

A few weeks before 488 was offered to the EATMS, Peter Mitchell of Cheam, Surrey, made a will which stated that money from his estate could be used for the restoration and preservation of trams and trolleybuses that had their origins in the British Isles. Peter quoted various possibilities, with 488 being one of them; before he passed away, he was told that his generosity would provide for the full restoration of this tramcar.

The Ffestiniog Railway was only too willing to take on the restoration of the tram; they were approached because they had performed such a very professional job on a London Transport Metropolitan Railway Coach which has been used on the One Hundred and Fiftieth anniversary of the London Underground. ALTEAD, were assigned the task of moving the tram from France to the Ffestiniog Railway's premises, and the lower deck of 488 arrived at Minffordd on the morning of Wednesday 6th March 2013. The top deck was unexpectedly delivered on the afternoon of Tuesday, 23rd April 2013.

488 will be restored to full working order and then moved to the East Anglia Transport Museum, who are likely to become the final owner of this tram. Enthusiasts are asked not to attempt to view restoration progress or seek information on this project either from the Ffestiniog Railway or the East Anglia Transport Museum but to use this website for progress reports and other associated information. You can add this site to your favourites or even make it your home page!

Those wanting additional information should contact [020 8958 5906]. Hugh Taylor is the executor of the estate providing funds for the full restoration of this tram.

Just to let you know

Every effort continues to be made to ensure that this web site displays as designed on your hardware, but it is a monumental task to achieve this utopia. For the moment only a combination of the Windows operating system on a desktop PC with any popular browser successfully shows this site as intended. Perhaps at some time in the future any combination of browser, operating system or device will show this site in all its glory, but for the moment we are not there yet. Sorry.

The national flags, seen in the heading, can be used to translate this site into French, Spanish or German. Subsequent pages will remain in your chosen language providing you click on the tour guide rather than using the navigation menu. Unfortunately using this feature slows down the loading of pages and inhibits enlarged versions of pictures from being displayed.

All images, photographs and video contained in this site are ©2014 Hugh Taylor, unless otherwise stated. To request permission to re-post or publish material located on this website, you must me first. No request is unreasonably withheld and seldom is payment required.

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Hugh Taylor, Edgware, Middlesex.

Stamp of Approval
Part of this original sketch was used on the cover of a book of 10 stamps for £1.30
Decimalisation of the UK currency was on 15th February 1971 and it is thought that the 13p postage rate was used in 1988
Why a tram sketch should have been used at that time, is a bit of a mystery.