WHO remembers the old Glasgow trams?
With the fierce-faced clippies who stood no nonsense, and the cheeky passengers who would wind them up?
All Our Yesterdays this week wants to hear your tram, trolley bus and bus stories.
Did you travel to work, or to meet your sweetheart, on one of the Glasgow trams? Maybe you worked as a driver or conductor?
At one of our previous Thanks for the Memories library drop-in events, we met Pat Black, nee McCowat, who was one of Glasgow’s first women bus drivers in 1975. Her career move was inspired by her late mother’s role in the First and Second World Wars.
(Glasgow was the first city in Britain to recruit female tram drivers during the First World War.)
Read more: The day Charlton Heston brought Sauchiehall Street to a standstill
“My mother, Ann McFarlane, was born in 1899, and in WWI when she was 18, she drove trams,” recalled Pat, who grew up in Partick. “After the war, she was made redundant, like many of the women who did the men’s jobs while they were away fighting. But in WWII, she went back and became a conductress. Her badge number was 1947.”
Pat’s grandfather James also drove trams, around 1900, in Partick, before the burgh was part of Glasgow city.
“I was a conductress on the buses and got paid off – but needs must, so I went to the driving school and learned to be a bus driver,” she said. “I was the only woman in the garage, but I was quite mouthy back then, so they very quickly realised they’d get short shrift if they gave me any problems....”
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