Great Grimsby Street Tramways
| Great Grimsby Street Tramways | |||||||||
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The tram depot at Grimsby is now used by buses, but there are still tram rails in the floor. | |||||||||
| Operation | |||||||||
| Locale | Grimsby and Cleethorpes | ||||||||
| Open | 4 June 1881 | ||||||||
| Close | 17 July 1937 | ||||||||
| Status | Closed | ||||||||
| Infrastructure | |||||||||
| Track gauge | 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) | ||||||||
| Propulsion system(s) | Horse, Electric | ||||||||
| Statistics | |||||||||
| Route length | 6.3 miles (10.1 km) | ||||||||
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The Great Grimsby Street Tramways Company was a tramway serving Grimsby and Cleethorpes in Lincolnshire, England. It was a subsidiary of the Provincial Tramways Company. They opened a horse tramway in 1881, running from the Wheatsheaf Inn in Bargate to the border with Cleethorpes, with a branch along Freeman Street, and extended the line into Cleethorpes in 1887. It followed the trend of many British systems, and was converted to an electric tramway in December 1901. Small extensions were made to the system at both ends, but the basic plan of the system remained the same throughout its life.
The company ran a mix of tramcars, some bought from new, four bought from the first public tramway to be built in London, and some built by the corporation, using trucks obtained from the Malleable Steel Castings Company. One unusual vehicle was an open-top single-deck toastrack car which was known as the Tram Coach. It only ran for four years, before it was sold to another system. After 1925, Grimsby Corporation bought second-hand vehicles from Sunderland, and Great Grimsby Street Tramways bought some from the Gosport and Fareham system.
Grimsby Corporation exercised their rights under the Tramways Act 1870 (33 & 34 Vict. c. 78) to buy the tramway within their boundaries after 21 years, and so the system was split in two in 1925, after negotiations were completed. They built a new depot from an aircraft hangar, but began replacing the tramway by trolleybuses and motorbuses soon after acquisition. The company were left with a small part of their original system, which they sold to Cleethorpes Urban District Council in 1936, along with their motorbuses. Cleethorpes converted the system to a trolleybus route just one year later, and trams finally stopped running on 17 July 1937.