Grimsby & Immingham Electric Railway
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The Grimsby & Immingham Electric Railway was an electric tramway network linking the towns of Grimsby and Immingham in Lincolnshire.
Immingham Docks were rather inaccessible by road, and their owner, the Great Central Railway, decided to build an electric light railway to link them to Grimsby in 1912. The line was nationalised as part of the London & North Eastern Railway, and was operated by the British Railways until summer 1961, when the service was closed and all 19 cars replaced by buses.
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[edit] History
Whistle new docks were being dug up in Grimsby having silted, Immingham possessed large docks capable of holding ships of up to 6000 tons at all states of the tide. A delegation was sent to Bristol and Cardiff where harbours were at a distance from the city. It seemed essential that proper communication links between Grimsby and the new docks at Immingham would have to be built.
The GC reached an agreement for the purchase of the land required and presented two Bills in Parliament of which the second was accepted as the Humber Commercial Railway and dock Act 1904.
An application for a Light Railway Order was drawn by the GC's solicitor for a link between the docks' estate's and Grimsby. The railway portions were built first as to carry the goods necessary for the construction of the street tramway. After plans to use electric traction between Corporation Road Pyewipe Depot, with a change to Immingham, using steam powered trains, these were amended in 1909 and electric traction to be used throughout.
[edit] The network
The electric railway had a line from Immingham Docks estate to Immingham Town. The first section was double reserved track from the docks to the town, where it became an ordinary street tramway. Trams reversed towards Grimsby and the line swerved to the right to maintain a south-eastward course on the five-mile stretch to Pyewipe depot.
At the depot, the line veered to the right to become a street tramway, using Gilbey Road and finally Corporation Road. A waiting room and parcel office were built next to Corporation Bridge as the Grimsby terminus.
An extension over Corporation Bridge project was authorised but never built, as work on the reconstruction of Corporation Bridge took too long, finishing only in 1928. The Corporation and Gilbey Roads section was cut back in 1956.
[edit] Power
The electric power was supplied in 6000V AC by two substations. The first was built three miles from Immingham by Siemens Brothers whose contract included the construction of the overhead line and the installation of 184 Baltic Redwood fir poles which would run along side the line. Two Westinghouse 250 kW rotary converters produced 500v DC for the trams. Traction feeders were installed every half mile. The substation itself was a redbrick construction, built by Dennis Gill & Sons of Doncaster for £507.
The second substation, continuously manned, was also built by Dennis Gill, for £707, next to the car sheds at Pyewipe. It contained three 250 kW Westinghouse rotary converters. One converter was used for lighting, one for traction and the third as a standby.
[edit] Tram depots
[edit] Pyewipe car sheds
The curiously named sheds near the Grimsby Borough boundary serviced all the trams. Pyewipe was built by H. Marrows for £1464. The sheds did not house the cars, which spent all their life out doors, only entering the workshop if repairs were needed. The workshop had the capacity to hold three trams on two tracks and the depot the rest of the fleet. It also housed a machine shop and store.
[edit] Rolling stock
The railway used three types of tram.
- 12 long bogie single-deck trams
- 4 short tram, numbered 5 to 8
- 14 bogie single-deck trams purchased from the Gateshead and Disctrict Tramways in 1951. These were painted in bright green. One is preserved at the National Tramway Museum in Crich.
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| Tramways in South Yorkshire and Humberside (Closed systems) |
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Barnsley and District | Dearne District | Doncaster | Grimsby | Grimsby & Immingham |
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