Giants Causeway, Portrush and Bush Valley Railway and Tramway Co
of Portrush, Co. Antrim
Also see Giant's Causeway Electric Tramway
1880 The company was incorporated. [1]
1881 obtained parliamentary powers
1883 The tramway was opened, the first commercial electric passenger tramway.
1888 12th OGM told that extension to the Giant's Causeway had been completed. A new larger generator from Elwell-Parker had been installed for supplying the electric vehicles[2]
1889 Engineer is W. A. Traill.[3]
The building of the Portrush Tramway – the first practical electric railway in the world – in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, 1881-1882 by Barry Price.
Brothers William Traill and Dr. Anthony Traill (later Provost of Trinity College Dublin), whose idea this railway was, were kinsmen of mine, and the engineer they made responsible for surveying the route and building the line, Edward Price of County Down, was my great-grandfather. The Traills introduced their colleague to their cousin Annie and romance blossomed. Hence the family connection.
William Acheson Traill, who was a geologist and architect as well as a businessman, grew up at Bushmills and owned shares in quarries on the north coast of County Antrim. The export of granite, basalt and iron ore from these was much hampered by having to move it all by road in horse-drawn carts along the hilly coastal route to Portrush, the nearest seaport, which lay to the west. William therefore had the idea of building a light railway along the coast as far as Bushmills, to carry passengers and freight, and at the same time to consider extending it to the nearby Giants’ Causeway, even then a major tourist attraction. This would have to be legally defined as a tramway, purely because it would be unfenced and built close to the line of the existing road.
He set about persuading local landowners and businessmen to buy shares in the project, as well as his old friend William Thompson, a respected scientist, who, though born nearby of a local family, lived across the water in Ayrshire. It was he who persuaded the Traills to consider the then unheard-of option of electric traction, and introduced them to his friends the Siemens brothers in Germany, who were carrying out experiments with this technology.
Thompson, who bought a large share in the company, was later ennobled as Lord Kelvin, the first scientist ever to enter the House of Lords, and is now buried in Westminster Abbey beside Sir Isaac Newton.
Building of the line commenced on the 21st of September 1881. A steam-powered generator was installed at Portrush in 1882, and the first successful trials with electric traction took place in November of that year, running between the towns of Portrush and Bushmills. Even before the official inauguration of a regular service on January 29th 1883, electric traction was being used on some passenger runs, with two steam locomotives employed, one as back-up during the first busy summer season, the other confined to the streets of Portrush. A 100% electric service could only be relied upon at busy times, generally speaking the summer months, with the big increase in power available from the commissioning that September, after various delays, of a hydro-electric power station at nearby Walkmill falls, itself a pioneering achievement. It was only then that a formal opening ceremony took place.
It seems astonishing today how quickly the whole project was made reality, a sign of the application and enthusiasm of all the parties concerned. This was typified when the Board of Trade inspectors, having required the application of a strict speed limit to the trains as was normal at that time, then insisted, at the eleventh hour, that an automatic system be fitted that prevented a speed of 12 m.p.h. being exceeded at any time. To save time, Edward, with no claims to being a mechanical engineer, quickly designed, constructed, installed (and patented!) such a system, which proved highly effective, and was fitted to all the electric cars well before the opening ceremony took place.
Even then, a steam locomotive still had to be made available for traction through the streets of Portrush, to allay the fears of some members of the public, until electricity collection was changed from a raised third rail to an overhead wire in 1899. At the same time, doctors in Portrush were recommending patients to take hold of the live rail (at around 200 volts DC) for a minute or two as a cure for rheumatism. Today’s Health and Safety enforcers, please note!
Whenever the Board’s inspectors called into question the safety of the third rail, it was normal for one of the directors of the company to pull down his trousers and sit on it, though this had been known to leave them with scorched underpants. These, we assume, would have been all-male meetings.
My great-grandmother Annie Price, whom I can clearly remember as an old lady, lived at Bushmills and obviously saw a lot of the Tramway under construction, and when it was first opened. Among the things she told me, one that comes to mind is that from the start it was clearly a point of honour to use the electric cars as often as possible, and tourists expected it, even if this sometimes resulted in the service being decidedly erratic. Passengers always remained good-humoured in an age long before people learned to complain about every small inconvenience. If they were asked to get out and push (maybe nearing the top of a hill), they just got out and pushed.
Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that, despite later claims to the contrary, this was the first practical and commercially viable electric railway in the world. The Siemens Brothers had demonstrated the principle on a short length of line near Berlin. They were at the time getting established in Great Britain, which they saw as their most important market, and were happy to buy a large shareholding in the Portrush line and to collaborate in using it as the first serious trial of the technology. It is often claimed that the great Thomas Edison was first, but a line he built at around this time in the yard of his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey was purely a small-scale demonstration for publicity purposes. Again, it is sometimes claimed that the tramway along Brighton sea-front came first, but this had its first trials in late 1883, and was initially only a ¼-mile long.
Among all the contradictory statements which have been made about the chronology of the Portrush project, the only first-hand accounts available to us seem to be an article, published in March 1883 in the Scientific American, by Dr. Edward Hopkinson, the electrical engineer assigned by Siemens to the project, and a paper written by Edward Price in 1892, both of which bear out the timetable given above. It seems amusing now to read Dr. Hopkinson’s assertion in the conclusion of his account that he believed there was a future for electric railways!
The Portrush line showed a respectable profit from the outset, no doubt helped by its novelty value, and the fact that Portrush was a popular holiday resort. This meant that the directors felt justified in embarking on the capital investment required to build the expensive viaduct over the River Bush that was needed to extend the line as far as the Giants’ Causeway. Edward Price had by this time taken up an appointment in Australia, so the work was completed by his brother Alfred, also a civil engineer.
My own engineering background makes me realise that nearly all of their teething problems would have been quickly dealt with had they had access to modern practices, and modern insulating materials instead of just shellac, cloth and rubber. The problems of voltage drop and tracking would have been easily cured by running a heavy cable on poles beside the track, and tapping it into the conductor rail at intervals.
As I understand it, the power cars available in 1883 carried motors of two different ratings. The lower-rated cars often ran solo, which meant they could only accommodate one class of passenger, whereas the more powerful ones could pull up to three trailer cars, or added freight wagons.
The role of Sir William Thompson in the project seems to have been generally underestimated. His world-renowned technical expertise and influential contacts must have been of great value, not to mention his tremendous enthusiasm. They had used him from the word go to deal with difficult questions from inspectors and others, particularly when the very busy Sir William Siemens, his close friend, was not available. When William (born Karl Wilhelm) Siemens died suddenly in November 1883, Thompson replaced him straight away as a director of the company.
The line closed in 1949, and all that remains of it today is a short tourist service from Bushmills to the Giants’ Causeway – about two miles long, and steam-powered!"
See Also
Sources of Information
- ↑ The Stock Exchange Year Book 1908
- ↑ The Belfast News-Letter (Belfast, Ireland), Tuesday, February 28, 1888
- ↑ 1889 Bradshaw's Railway Manual
- Family Documents kindly contributed by Barry Price