The lost tram ….. or fifteen streets and a vanished way of life

 So, there I was on Fair Street close to Piccadilly Railway Station beside a tram destined for Bury via Victoria Station.

The lost tram on Fair Street, 2025

By any tram planner’s route this was a lost tram, and more to the point was sitting empty and alone in a siding outside a rival railway station.

Bury via Victoria beside Piccadilly Railway Station, 2025

Was it lost or out for a jolly and just decided it had had enough?

I do not know.

But it was an object lesson on just what you can come across while navigating the city from Mayfield Gardens to Store Street.

I am convinced I would have found the best route but as ever Street Google did it far quick than I could have hoped to do.

And guided by it we traversed 15 roads passing what had once been a hive of activity, including goods yard, small businesses, canal wharfs, St Andrew’s Church and heaps of now vanished houses.*

Where we would have walked in 1894

Old stuff and new, Fair Street, 2025

As late as the early 1950s there was still much to remind you that this had been an industrial place, dominated by the railway and canal and mixing storage facilities, with dye works, textile mills, printing and metal working.

But on a sunny Saturday morning as we walked the fifteen streets there was little of all that to see.  Plenty of open spaces, vying with car parks and small businesses with plenty of ghosts.

Location; north of Mayfield

Pictures; the lost tram, Fair Street, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Where we would have walked in 1894, from the OS map of South Lancashire, 1894 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*The Mornington Crescent journey.  Arthur Street, Hoyle Street, Temperance Street, North Western Street, Crane Street, Fairfield Street, St Andrew’s Street, Adair Street, Portugal East Street, Fair Street, Congou Street, Chapeltown Street, Sparkle Street, Store Street