The July 1962 issue of ‘Modern Tramway’ included a short article about the Carstairs House Tramway, written by Christopher T. Harvie. [1]

Wikipedia states that the Carstairs House Tramway operated between Carstairs railway station and Carstairs House between 1888 and 1895. [2] Railscot has slightly different information. It indicates that the tramway opened in 1889 as an electric tramway but reverted to being horse-powered by 1896. It continued operating in this way until 1925. [3]

The two RailMapOnline extract below show the full length of the line superimposed on Google Maps satellite imagery. [7]

Carstairs House is now known as Monteith House. It overlooks the River Clyde and sits “about one mile from the main Glasgow-London line of the Caledonian Railway at Carstairs West Station, and in 1886 the owner decided to build a tramway from the railway station to carry passengers to the house, agricultural implements and supplies to the Home Farm, and the great amount of coal then needed for heating the mansion. Accordingly plans were made for a line of 2 ft. 6 in. gauge, electrified at 250 volts, the current being generated by a turbine driven by a waterfall on the Clyde. … The positive and negative conductors were wires running alongside the tracks, supported by insulated posts about a foot high. On the car there was a double shoe to pick up current.” [1: p226]

At Carstairs House there were a few short branches serving a carriage shed and stores/outhouses. Between the House and the railway station was Carstairs Mains Home Farm where there were two further branch lines, one into the yard and the other to a sawmill. The sawmill provided the Caledonian Railway “with a considerable traffic in timber, the area being well forested. Leaving the Farm, the line cut across wooded country to rejoin the road and run alongside it to the main gates of the Estate where, at a lodge immediately opposite the railway, the terminal for passengers was situated. Shortly before it reached the lodge a branch diverged to the left, to run to a transfer siding with the Caledonian Railway.” [1: p226]

There were three electric cars used for passenger services, “the first was a saloon four-wheeler built at the House in 1886. The other two were probably obtained second-hand from the electric railway demonstrated at the 1886 Edinburgh Exhibition and may have been built by the North Metropolitan Tramway Company of London.” [1: p227]

The small six-seat 2ft 6in gauge tram constructed locally for the Carstairs House tramway can be seen below. Different sources give different information about the year in which electric operation ceased. Most probably electric operation ceased in 1905 but the tramway itself survived for a further 30 years in order to ship coal and other freight from Carstairs station to the house and to export sawmill products from the estate, through the use of horse-drawn wagons. The tram, which was powered through electricity generated by a hydro-electric plant, drew its current from raised conductor rails, as clearly visible in the photograph below.

A further image showing one of these trams can be found in a book by Peter Waller, Lost Tramways of Scotland: Scotland West. [9]

In 1905, apparently, the owner was electrocuted by falling on the live electrical contacts. The result was that the electrical equipment was removed, the electric cars were placed in storage in their dedicated shed. They remained there until the final closure of the line.

Harvie tells us that:

“After the removal of the electrical equipment, horses took over the working of the line and its history continued uneventfully until the first world war, when it saw a period of intense activity as a transporter of spagnum moss, or bog-cotton, which was used as a substitute for American cotton during the period of unrestricted submarine warfare.

The line continued in use until around 1935, when the Montieth family left Carstairs House. Apparently the electric cars were then scrapped, after over thirty years of disuse. As the coming of the motor-car had ended its passenger services the agricultural tractor and motor-lorry meant the end of its usefulness as a freight carrier.

Shortly after the opening of the line there was put forward a plan for the construction of a network of local electric railways to serve the towns of Motherwell, Hamilton and Wishaw, after the same pattern as the Carstairs House Tramway, with power generated by the Falls of Clyde, near Lanark. Although this scheme remained a proposal, both parts of it were later carried out independently, a conventional electric tramway of 4 ft. 7 in. gauge being built to link these towns with Glasgow in 1903 and a generating station being built on the Falls of Clyde by the Clyde Valley Power Company.” [1: p227]

References

1. Christopher T. Harvie; The Carstairs House Tramway; in Modern Tramway and Light Railway Review, Volume 25 No. 295, Light Railway Transport League and Ian Allan Hampton Court, Surrey, p226-227.
2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carstairs_House_Tramway, accessed on 8th August 2023.
3. https://www.railscot.co.uk/companies/C/Carstairs_House_Tramway, accessed on 8th August 2023.
4. https://maps.nls.uk/geo/find/#zoom=15.4&lat=55.69277&lon=-3.66831&layers=298&b=11&z=0&point=0,0, and https://maps.nls.uk/view/75651318 accessed on 8th August 2023.
5. https://maps.nls.uk/geo/find/#zoom=14.7&lat=55.68984&lon=-3.67589&layers=298&bk=11&z=0&point=0,0, and https://maps.nls.uk/view/75651318, accessed on 8th August 2023.
6. https://maps.nls.uk/view/82893909, accessed on 8th August 2023.
7. https://www.railmaponline.com/UKIEMap.php, accessed on 8th August 2023.
8. https://m.facebook.com/groups/352799184389/permalink/10158618389784390, accessed on 8th August 2023.
9. Peter Waller; Lost Tramways of Scotland: Scotland West; Graffeg, Llanelli, October 2022.