Mike, that is a lovely view of a tram in Weston. I was always crazy about trams (born in Villa Road in 1933, perhaps it's understandable) and I have the vaguest recollection of seeing them in Weston on a family trip in about 1937. Next year we were there again, but all that was left, as I remember, was some cars awaiting scrapping, parked up by the pier.
The only compensation was the car ride down there. My dad always used a road that ran next to the Avon in Bristol under the suspension bridge at Clifton. Trams ran to a point short of the bridge called Hotwells, and they lasted until 1940, I believe. To a little brummy, the Bristol trams were something quite foreign, but with a lot of character. (I remember asking my parents why Bristol trams didn't run on the Bristol Road, which seemed sense to me in those days).
Come 1943, and I got to know the cheerful trams of Leicester and, two years later, the Llandudno trams, which were more fascinating than the others really. In the last years they acquired a lot of cast-offs from other tramway undertakings, and not long before they closed down they bought a lot of bits and pieces from Birmingham City Transport.
To me, Birmingham-by-the-Sea was Llandudno, and I also remember the journey past Prestatyn, where there were a lot of old Midland Red SOS buses built for their local subsidiary there, used as holiday caravans, parked next to the railway track.
Peter
