Trams and Buses

Visitors from far and wide love the museum’s collection of old Corporation trams and trolleybuses which once lined the streets of Glasgow, transporting people all across the city and beyond.

 

Elevated walkways in the exhibition hall allow you to get really close to the trams and buses and peep into the top decks.

 

The first buses and trams were pulled by horses – and the manure wasn’t wasted but collected and used as fertilizer on municipal farms. You can see an example of an early horse-drawn tram from 1893 in the main exhibition hall.

 

By 1898 Glasgow Corporation owned 385 horse-drawn trams and well over 4 thousand horses.

 

Until the late 1950s tramcars had coloured panels below the top deck windows to identify which route they were travelling. Many Glaswegians couldn’t read, so colour coding let them know which tram to take: a ‘Blue’ tram took you to Kirklee, and a ‘White’ one to the University. The last tram was in September 1962.

 

Single and double-decker motorbuses were introduced to supplement the tram fleet, but by the late 1950s had outnumbered them.

Both trams and buses were supplemented by a fleet of electric trolley buses – a cross between a tramcar and a motor bus - nicknamed ‘the ‘Silent Death’ because they were so quiet.

 

The TBS 13 on show was the last single-decker trolley bus in service in the UK and the Albion No B92 was the last completely Scottish-built bus in the city’s fleet.