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"Hello, and welcome to YourHistoryHere, the place where you can share your knowledge about those unusual places, buildings or things that make places interesting to live. This site is on limited circulation at the moment, and is only supposed to be a mySociety demo, not a big posh project like PledgeBank. It may not be obvious, but the most important feature of YourHistoryHere is the construction of an underlying system for collecting and sharing geographic annotations in an open syndicated format, so you can use the yummy local data people leave for your own purposes. We're building two sites that show how this can be useful, this one and Placeopedia.com, and we'd love to share the code for other ideas. Anyone want to build WhereIHadMyFirstKiss.com? Tom Steinberg, mySociety Director - 23/08/2005"

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LCC Tramways Upminster

Next to the side entrance to Upminster tube station is a green cabinet. It is clearly very old and looks a bit like the cabinets used by BT or cablecos but much older. It has on it "LCC Tramways". What was it used for? Were there ever trams in Upminster?

Long. 0.25208, Lat. 51.55872 | written on 13th Oct 2005 by S | Email this to a friend | abusive?

Responses

Bill Martin replies: Yes I have seen it and wondered how it got there. Ilford's tramways only got as far as Chadwell Heath along the old Romford Rd. LCC trams were suppose to go along the wide boulevards on the Becontree estate, previously used for the building materials railways, but were never laid. As it is an LCC box it was probabbly recovered from somewhere else and re-used by London Transport as part of an upgrade exercise of the District line. It should be remembered that District / C2C did not used to operate as separate railways until the latter was elecrified in the late 1950s.

written 31st Oct 2006 | abusive?

geoff replies: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~kelsey/cranch13.htm

please read link, there was a tramline in upminster

written 21st May 2007 | abusive?

Dave replies: Hello
I too am perplexed by this box. I work for c2c , the toc operating upminster , and have long wondered about this box. I have studied what i can find and we seem to have a quandary. The tramway serviced the Cranham brickworks. . . . the works closed in 1920 . . . . the box is dated 1928?! So did LCC take it over as an experiment ? Test its viability ?
The other problem is the box is on the south side of the station and the map suggests the old tramway ran to a point north of the station !
There is also the problem of the road to what is now the car park. By the station building, where box is located, it is big and round , possibly a turntable site ?
Perhaps someone has more detailed history references and can pour some light on this.
Many thanks in anticipation

written 7th Sep 2007 | abusive?

Mick replies: I can't say what it was for but I can say it was almost certainly nothing to do with the brickworks tramway (Upminster brickworks, not Cranham by the way) which was operated by horse (uphill empties) and gravity (downhill loaded). No sign of any electricity.
On the subject of this tramway, does anyone know why the tunnels in-line with its general route but beyond the mapped route and passing under the c2c line east of Upminster station are built to railway gauge while only apparently ever used for a footpath. Did the line ever pass South of the railway or was it planned? As a school child I remember abandoned railway parts on the playing fields of the Bell school also South of the railway. Is there any connection?
Any enlightenment will be appreciated.

written 3rd Sep 2008 | abusive?

Mick replies: I can't say what it was for but I can say it was almost certainly nothing to do with the brickworks tramway (Upminster brickworks, not Cranham by the way) which was operated by horse (uphill empties) and gravity (downhill loaded). No sign of any electricity.
On the subject of this tramway, does anyone know why the tunnels in-line with its general route but beyond the mapped route and passing under the c2c line east of Upminster station are built to railway gauge while only apparently ever used for a footpath. Did the line ever pass South of the railway or was it planned? As a school child I remember abandoned railway parts on the playing fields of the Bell school also South of the railway. Is there any connection?
Any enlightenment will be appreciated.

written 3rd Sep 2008 | abusive?

Edward Cecil replies: In those days of depression in the late 1920s
nothing was wasted and it could be the box was simply overhauled and reused in a new location when the District line was extended
from Barking to Upminster in the early 1930s

written 18th Sep 2008 | abusive?

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