Greater Manchester's Museum of Transport

Stockport Corporation Transport

History

Horse Trams were operated in Stockport by two different companies, the Stockport and Hazel Grove Carriage and Tramway company (until 1904) and the Manchester Carriage and Tramways Company (until 1901). Stockport Corporation did not renew the Companies leases, opting instead to electrify and operate the tramways itself. The first tram ran on 31st August 1901 and the fleet gradually built up to 85 tramcars. The network included routes to Hazel Grove, Edgeley, Gatley, Manchester, Reddish and Hyde. As with most of the Greater Manchester Tramway operators there was joint operation, Stockport Cars were seen in Manchester and Hyde. The tramway remained in good repair until the end, the section between Levenshulme and Stockport was renewed as late as 1946. Hardly any of the network was abandoned until Manchester replaced the trams between Manchester and Hazel Grove with buses in January 1949. This forced the abandonment issue and a fleet of buses was purchased during 1950 and 1951. The last tram ran on 25th August 1951. Stockport was the last operator of conventional trams in Greater Manchester.

Stockport Corporation was one of the early pioneers of trolleybuses in this country, placing 3 vehicles into service on the 10th March 1913 on a route that ran from the Market to Offerton along Hall Street. The service lasted until 8th October 1919, although by then only two of the three vehicles were in service. The vehicles used the Lloyd Kohler pick up system and had Brush bodies. The lack of spares (the electrical system was German) and the effect of the poor condition of the roads on the bodies brought the experiment to an early end.

The first motor buses placed in service were introduced in 1919 to replace the trolleybuses. These were three AEC 30 seat single deckers. Because the tram flourished, motor bus development was not rapid. During the period 1923 to 1930 only single deckers were taken into stock and these were a wide variation of manufacturers and models, Vulcans, Leyland Lions, AEC Reliances, Crossley Eagles and Leyland Tiger TS3’s. The first double deckers to arrive were Leyland Titan TD3Cs in 1934 and during the rest of the decade more Titans and Tigers were purchased together with a pair of Crossley Mancunian’s. There was a considerable expansion of operation during the war and a considerable fleet of Massey utility bodied Guy Arabs were delivered. These were long lived for utility buses and very unusual because they were not rebuilt or rebodied and remained in their original state until they were withdrawn between 1963 and 1965.

Immediately after the war Crossley motors relocated their factory from Gorton to Heaton Mersey at the most northerly part of Stockport. This had an effect on the purchasing policy of the undertaking and up to the cessation of building Crossley chassis in 1951 a total of 65 double deckers were purchased, compared to less than 10 before the war. The abandonment of the trams during the period 1949 to 1951 brought in large batches of Leyland Titans and Crossley DD42 double deckers . The large influx of buses in the early 1950’s meant that very few buses were bought for 10 years. Some of the few that were purchased were interesting because they had the last bodies built in the Crossley factory. As the factory was wound down the production of the last 10 Crossley bodied Leylands dragged on and the corporation was forced to collect the last few before they were finished and complete the work themselves in their own workshops.

The busy nature of the Stockport routes meant that the undertaking did not purchase many single deckers after the war and those that it did operate were only used for lightly loaded journeys or when double deckers were not available. Stockport always got two or three years more out of its buses that the surrounding operators, so that it always seemed to have interesting old buses, it ran some of the last prewar double deckers in Greater Manchester and had a fleet of centre entrance Leyland Tigers which looked old fashioned when built in 1935 which survived until as long as 1962.

The 1960’s saw the start of a fleet renewal program using rear entrance East Lancashire bodied Leyland Titans, starting with 27ft PD2’s and ending with 30 ft PD3’s. Stockport operated busy routes (North Western operated on the quieter interurban and rural routes around Stockport) and saw not advantage in one man operation, whilst Manchester was putting its revolutionary Mancunian Atlanteans into service, Stockport continued to place buses into service which would have been familiar to passengers and engineers 40 years before. The reluctance to change meant that the last rear entrance bus to be built in the United Kingdom was delivered to Stockport in 1969.

As always Stockport had to bow to the inevitable and ordered a fleet of 10 Bristol VRTs with East Lancashire Bodies which were to be delivered in the autumn of 1969, but they were destroyed in a disastrous fire at the body builders factory whilst being built.

In 1965, work commenced on a new garage, workshops and offices on Daw Bank to replace the tram depots in Heaton Lane and Mersey Square. However the corporation got little use out of the facility, as it was absorbed into SELNEC Passenger Transport Executive on November 1st 1969. These buildings remain today and are occupied by Stagecoach. There is a granite plaque built into the garage wall commemorating the operation of the Corporations trams, trolleybuses and Buses.

Fleet livery was always red and ivory.