Author : Geoffrey Hilditch
ISBN : 9780853616146
Cover : paperback
Price : £12.95

Very few road passenger transport professionals, and especially those involved in the now almost vanished municipal sector, heave ever taken the trouble to write down for publication a record of their activities which would have include an outline of engineering, operation and financial/administrative problems that came their daily way.

Just what must it have been like to set up and then run a brand new circa 1900s electric tramway system or to cope later with the vagaries of those temperamental 1920s buses, or in the 1930s to start to abandon tramcars for motor or trolley buses or to engage in the initial and quite unprecedented traffic court battles?

Consequently here is the author’s attempt to provide present day transport enthusiasts with just a flavour of what it was like to be so involved from the middle of the 20th century through the next few decades when almost non-stop change was the name of the game.

Before one reached the dizzy heights of finding the legend ‘General Manager’ affixed to your office door one had to obtain a suitable start in the industry and thereafter try to make progress as opportunity allowed. If anything, obtaining that first start could be far from easy. Here then is the story of how one interested but uniformed schoolboy tried to attain his early and overriding ambition to see his name on the side, preferably of a municipal tramcar, against those almost magic words ‘General Manager’.

A5 format, 168 pages, 138 illustrations.