Tatty but interesting - a sheet of headed notepaper from one of the largest municipal transport departments in the U.K., that of the City of Manchester and, neatly, addressed to the General Manager of the neighbouring City of Salford, J W Blakemore. Interestingly, since Salford was elevated to city status in 1926 as Manchester had been in 1853, it would take until post-WW2 years for both undertakings to embrace the title of "City Transport". Here they are both still styled "Corporation Transport Department". Even that was relatively new as "Transport" was only really starting to replace "Tramways" as towns and cities such as Manchester and Salford started to emply motor buses, and trolleybuses, to supplement and replace trams. In Manchester's case, by 1934, the decision to ditch tramcars and replace by buses was in hand and that was largely the decision of the man who had signed this letter, the General Manager, R Stuart Pilcher.
Robert Stuart Pilcher CBE FRSE (1882–1961) was an influential figure in British urban transport in his day. Born in LIverpool he started his career in Montral, Canada, before returning to manage the tramways in Aberdeen in 1906. In 1918 he moved on to manage the important Edinburgh system that was, at the time, still employing the cable haulage system. In 1920 he oversaw the merger of the City system with that of neighbouring Leith when Edinburgh the two burghs merged, and whose system was conventionally elctrically operated. In the next few years he oversaw the complete electrification of the old Edinburgh system as well as seeing motor buses more widely introduced to the city's network, and during which time, he had time to become the president of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts and be elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh - the latter accounting for the first set of initials after his name, the second set showing he was a member of the Institute of Transport.
In 1929 he was appointed to the Manchester post, then one of the 'top four' municipalities in terms of size - Birmingham, Glasgow and Liverpool being the other heavy hitters. In Manchester he soon made his mark, famously with the first large scale conversion of a tram route to motor bus operation. The Circular 53 route required single deck cars, had sections of single track with passing loops, and traversed endless busy city streets. The availability, by the early 1930s, of more modern, reliable buses (in this case Leylands) with lower height double deck bodywork, helped deliver improved services, takings and less need for capital investment in a tram system that mostly dated back to the early years of the century and required modernisation. Picher decided upon a complete replacement of the trams although there where some on the council who thought differently!
Trams used municipally produced electricity, not foreign fuel, and Picher not only saw the tramways deliver their final extensions (on reserved tracks along new highways) but also a batch of modern looking trams that were to bear his name as "Picher cars". At the demise of Manchester's tramways, in 1949 long delayed by war, several of these Pilcher cars were purchased by Edinburgh Corporation Transport and so went to a department he had famously 'trammed' to such good effect!
He also famously was somewhat backed into a decision to introduce trolleybuses, a halfway house between manoeuverabilty and muncipal electricity, and Manchester ended up with a decent sized fleet of them. These trolleybus routes, rather unusually, were jointly operated with neighbouring boroughs and Manchester had an unusually large number of such inter-working with both councils and company systems. By the ealry 1930s Manchester was at the hub of a network of cross-city 'express' bus services, similar to London's Green Line, but that was broekn up by the new Traffic Commissioners and complaints as to city centre traffic levels.
Once Manchester had decided to 'bury' its tramways these neighbouring tram operators had little option but to start to look at replacing theirs. This letter refers to services operated alongside Salford's into the vast Trafford Park Industrial Estate that required not only 'regular' services in working hours but a then vast number of works specials and duplicate runnings in peak hours. Trafford Park was famous for these works tram and bus services that continued for decades and that, although shifted vast mumbers of passengers, gave Manchester's transport department one of those public transport headaches - the requirement of a large fleet to meet peak hour demands that then often for the large part sat expensively and idly in garages.
One last note is it always slightly amuses me - MCTD's postal address was 55 Piccadilly and I enjoyed working for many years in 55 Broadway, the then London Transport headquarters!
