SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

...an old tram related metal box? At the West end of Calverley:http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= ... 2,,2,10.02

Shouldn't think so, Cardi. I don't think trams ever reached Calverley. Sam Ledgard ran buses there, as did Hedna, then West Yorkshire linked Leeds with Bradford and Keighley, while Kitchen ran to Pudsey. Don't recall any old Calverleyites talking about trams. Can't quite identify location of your photo - looks like it might be near top of Calverley Cutting?

On the A657, as you come into Calverly from the west, up the long straight stretch it's where the road bears right, I think it's called Carr Road at that poitnt

I don't know what it is. I've walked past there zillions of times and never noticed the box. It looks vaguely electrical - street lights?The top entrance to Calverley Cutting is just to the left of the metal fence, Uno Hoo, between the concrete planters. If you zoom out once and pan left with the little icon (top left,) you'll see it. PS Further to the left, is the windowless brick building in the field an air-raid shelter?    

Uno Hoo wrote: Shouldn't think so, Cardi. I don't think trams ever reached Calverley. Sam Ledgard ran buses there, as did Hedna, then West Yorkshire linked Leeds with Bradford and Keighley, while Kitchen ran to Pudsey. Don't recall any old Calverleyites talking about trams. Can't quite identify location of your photo - looks like it might be near top of Calverley Cutting? I read somewhere that the Bradford trams ran to a junction with the Leeds trams at Stanningley bottom once. I believe that there were dual gauge trams that could alter their gauge and travel between Bradford and Leeds - whether they travelled to Calverley I couldn't say.Had the gauges been the same in the heyday of the trams it would have been possible to travel from Leeds to Summit just west of Todmorden by tram. However they weren't. There was a gap at Summit of about a mile between the Todmorden system and the Rochdale system which connected into the Manchester system. Somewhere someon fantasised that it was nearly possible to travel from Leeds to Liverpool by tram - a truly interurban street car service like they apparently used to have in the US>

How long would that have taken, not that I'd know but were the trams' top speed about 30?

LS1 wrote: How long would that have taken, not that I'd know but were the trams' top speed about 30? It'd probably have taken hours!    

Thanks, Si. Got the full picture now. It is the top of Calverley Cutting.Yes, the brick building was (is) an air-raid shelter. I don't know at what stage these things become dysfunctional, or why they've never been demolished.My maternal grandfather used to say the same about being able to travel from Leeds to Liverpool by tram, except for one stretch, presumably somewhere in the Pennine district, which he said was walkable. Probably was in his time, when people walked long distances as a matter of routine - my mother used to talk of walking from Farsley to Calverley & Rodley station for a train to Otley, from whence she and her parents would walk to Darley for a holiday on a farm there.There was a short period when through tram running between Leeds and Bradford was made possible by use of tapering bogeys to traverse the change of gauge at Stanningley. I seem to remember reading that it didn't last long - the speed of GNR trains on the Leeds-Bradford via Stanningley line was so much faster that passenger numbers on the trams were insufficient to justify the extra costs of fancy axles on new rolling-stock. I don't remember trams at Stanningley myself - Leeds had cut back to Half Mile Lane, and Bradford had replaced them with trolleybuses and motorbuses along Leeds Road quite soon after WW2.

For anyone who passes Stanningley Bottom, next time you're there pause for a moment to reflect on the horrific scene on one prewar occasion when a tram ran away out of control in Richardshaw Lane. It careered across the main road and was severely damaged when it ran into the shops which are still opposite the junction - the shop suffered very badly also.

And the driver?