When this book was written, the tram had all but disappeared from Britain's streets. Yet it is such a concise and useful work that I now cherish my battered and much re-read copy. It basically tells the story of British street tramways from their origin in 1860 to their virtual death some hundred years later. (Their rebirth as one solution to city transport in the 1990s post-dates this book; and in any case, the model of operation that modern tram [or 'light rail'] systems employ is rather different to that practised when the electric tramcar was the only form of mechanised transport on the streets.)

The author worked in various transport undertakings and had direct experience of running tramway systems. Yet his pessimism over the future was not just confined to the vanishing electric tramcar. The book closes with these words:

"Perhaps some of the babes in arms today will live to see the time when trains, buses, cars and probably aircraft have gone to join the tram in history - leaving them with hovercraft and rockets for earth and space travel, unless they have themselves, with the whole lot, disappeared in nuclear fission."

Posterity did different, fortunately. But the historical analysis remains valid. ( )