1000 NOT OUT...83 YEARS OF CAMPAIGNING

摘要

"Anniversaries are occasions for looking both backwards and forwards," so wrote J. Joyce in the 300th edition of the Modern Tramway in December 1962. So as we celebrate the 1000th edition of what is now affectionately known to readers around the world as TAUT, what are the lessons that 1000 issues, six name changes and 12 editors teach us? Firstly, that the original purposes of the Light Railway Transport League (and Light Rail Transit Association since 1979), namely the advocation of street tramways and light railways, are as apposite today as they were in 1938 with issue No. 1. Back then, the prospects for tramways in the UK were bleak. A Royal Commission had recently pronounced tramways obsolete and over 40 towns and cities, including my own home town of Rochdale, had ripped up their systems and replaced them with buses. This trend continued after World War Two, resulting in the virtual extinction of street tramways in the UK and many other countries in the western world. A handful of survivors, including Blackpool, kept the faith.