But I guess we will be sometime in the late 1930s or ‘40s.
The photograph perfectly captures that moment just after the end of the shift at AEI.
The long line of trams waits for the workforce which is just appearing through the factory gates.
All of which is well documented, so instead I shall concentrate on the detail. The first of the workforce is out of the factory and hurrying to catch the first tram. It is a scene captured countless times in photographs and news reels from the period.
What is missing are the hundreds of of people who any minute will appear on their bikes, reminding us that this was still the time when the cycle was a cheap alternative to the tram or bus. And of course what we won't see in any great numbers are workers driving home in cars.
I had hoped that the products in the shop might give a clue to a date. But Robin cigarettes were being marketed at the beginning of the last century and were still being produced in the 1950s, long after our line of trams had gone to scrap heap.
A timely reminder that this was still a time when smoking was common place and when the upstairs of the bus or tram would be blue from the tobacco smoke.
Much of which would be from the roll up which like the tram is almost a thing of the past.
Picture; from the collection of Allan Brown
Looks like 3rd Avenue. It was still hectic leaving 'The Big House' in 1975 when I was there at GEC. Lots of buses, not many had cars, only bosses.
ReplyDeleteI had an Uncle who worked at Metropolitan Vickers (Metrovicks as it was known), later than this period, but the scene of queuing trams was to be replicated by queuing buses until the Parks decline. I recall going on an open day with my uncle taking me into the boiler house, a long row of Lancashire Boilers, coal fired, to produce steam to power the plant. Years later I was to end up working for a ,company which produced The Iron Fireman automatic chain grate stoker (a moving bed of burning coal fed by a hopper). Burning coal is far more technical than most folk realise. On the subject of smoking, a whole host of paraphernalia has almost disappeared now, match striking plates on the back of seats, proudly enameled with MCTD, Manchester Corporation Transport Department, in Red & Cream livery, it's surface laid with rough sandpaper like material. Small details long gone now that smokers are the new pariah's.
ReplyDeleteFascinating Phil
DeleteI was working at GEC in Trafford Park in 1974 and it wasn't much different, walking to work in pea soup fog/smog.
ReplyDeleteThis is Third Avenue. I worked at Williams Deacon’s Bank there in the fifties. At that time all the local streets were covered with buses to take people home. When the siren at Metrovicks went about thirty thousand people streamed out of the gates.
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