This short article could be entitled, ‘The Modern Tramway takes on the Manchester Guardian‘. In. Its May 1957 journal the Light Railway Transport League asks whether its readers had read the Manchester Guardian on 22nd January. The featured image shows trams in Rotterdam in May 1957. [3]

In an article entitled ‘A Twisted Tale’, The Modern Tramway Journal is surprised to see the Manchester Guardian being taken in by the spirit of the current age which was decidedly anti,-Tram. [1: p83]

“Did you read the ‘Manchester Guardian’s’ account of the re- building of Rotterdam in the issue of 22nd January? It was a good article, catching the spirit of the modern conception of town planning, and making you feel that the writer had not only visited Rotterdam but had been genuinely inspired by the creat- ive talent of its designers until you got to his last sentence, which pro- vided so violent a contrast that it might have been written by a different person. It read: “It is odd to see trams still clanking through the city and to hear that there is no intention as yet of scrapping them.”

Whatever was the writer [on] about? Rotterdam’s trams are among the finest and most modern in Europe, as well as some of the quietest, a system that conforms to the League’s highest ideals and amply attains its motto of “Vlug, veilig en goedkoop (fast, safe and cheap).””

[1: p83]

As the article goes on to explain, “nothing about a Rotterdam tram could remotely be described as clanking; they run on track entirely free from dropped joints and corrugations, and their noisiest feature is the click of the controller ratchet. As for the town planning aspect, if you have visited Rotterdam during the last 10 years you will have seen how the rebuilding of the city went hand in hand with the rebuilding of the transport system; the tramways in the main streets in the city centre are now sited on central reservations, free from other traffic, and the busiest stops are laid out with a foresight rare else- where, the track dividing so that each group of routes has its own stop and shelter side by side. The service the trams give is one of the finest a city could have, a smooth, effortless flow of high-capacity vehicles operating at the cheapest fares in Holland, and how any trained observer could visit the city and fail to be impressed by it is difficult to understand.” [1: p83]

While it may have been true that the oldest tramcars on the Rotterdam network were contemporaries of the HR2s in London they were actually almost silent! Indeed, The Modern Tramway expressed surprise that the city’s tram company(Rotterdamse Ekectrische Tram (R.E.T.)) considered those vehicles due for retirement. Apparently the company had already ordered a first batch of replacement single, and two car articulated sets. Pointedly The Modern Tramway comments:

“As for the other post-war cars, their equipment came from Trafford Park, and the ‘Guardian’s’ outburst is hardly calculated to further the export trade of Metropolitan-Vickers who made them.”

[1: p84]

So, what might have been the explanation for the Manchester Guardian’s faux-pas? The Modern Tramway thought that it had an explanation which might be charitable:

“Perhaps the writer, putting his impressions on paper some time after his visit, searched in his mind for the sound of Rotterdam’s trams (and failed, since they are noiseless), and unconsciously completed his mental picture by substituting the tram noises he knew in Manchester, the home of groaning motors, rattling windows, dropped joints, broken check-rail, lifeguard trays tied up with string, four-wheel cars with odd bearings, bogie cars with odd trucks and all the rest of it. Either this, or he deliberately set out to mislead and based his words on three quite erroneous assumptions, to wit:

(a) A modern city with trams is odd;

(b) Trams, including Rotterdam ones, clank;

(c) Rotterdam’s trams will ultimately be scrapped, but not as yet.

We had always looked on the Manchester Guardian as a factual paper with a liberal outlook, a traditional supporter of oppressed minorities, and free of the bigoted outlook that is so often present elsewhere. We did not expect a paper that devoted page after page to the horrors of shipping live horses to Antwerp to show the customary English attitude of ignorance and intolerance towards tramcars; trams, after all, are a persecuted minority without the means of defending themselves.”

[1: p84]

I suspect that The Modern Tramway editor had his/her tongue firmly in his/her cheek as they penned that last paragraph!

The article continues:

“If the contributor had written about St. Malo or Douai or Maubeuge or some other of those French towns whose trams were capable of racing a tortoise on equal terms then we might have felt a glimmer of sympathy, but the article was on Rotterdam, and it is possible only to say that the remarks were inappropriate, misleading and absolutely untrue.

Of course, we wrote to the ‘Guardian’; on enquiring among our readers who know Rotterdam, we found that they too had not been slow to refute this smear against the R.E.T., and we believe that some of the Guardian’s’ overseas readers wrote as well. Last (but by no means least), our friend Ir. Bogstra, the General Manager of the R.E.T., was so surprised by the Guardian’s remarks that he sent the paper a set of photographs of the newest trams and a coldly factual analysis of the reasons why Rotterdam prefers trams to buses. From all this, we might have expected to read at least one “Letter to the Editor” disagreeing with the contributor, but all that happened was the appearance of a childish note of defiance in the “Miscellany” gossip-column a fortnight or so later, expressing surprise that there were such things as silent modern trams; because the word “tram” rhymed with “slam” you expected it to be noisy, and so on in the same vein. There are newspapers from which we should have expected unenlightened comment, but we never thought that we should have to include the Manchester Guardian’ among their number.”

[1: p84]

Rotterdam’s Trams remain an integral part of the city’s transport provision. “Opened in 1879, the network currently has nine regular tramlines, and three special or seasonal tramlines. It has been operated since 1927 by Rotterdamse Elektrische Tram (RET). The tram network is the city’s more extensive public transport system, while the rapid transit Rotterdam Metro is the more utilized system.” [2]

References

1. A Twisted Tale; in The Modern Tramway, the Journal of the Light Railway Transport League; May, 1957, p83-84.
2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Rotterdam, accessed on 1st July 2023.
3. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Centraal_Station_in_Rotterdam,_exterieurs_en_interieurs,_Bestanddeelnr_908-6089.jpg, This is an image from the Nationaal Archief, the Dutch National Archives, donated in the context of a partnership program, © Herbert Behrens/Anefo, it is shared here under the Creative Commons CC-0-1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.