Douglas Southern Electric Tramway

Today I'm going to be showing a postcard of something destroyed long before I was born.

The Douglas Southern Electric Tramway travelled from Douglas Head to Port Soderick ( which will feature in a later post) from 2nd September 1896 to 28th August 1939. It was eventually destroyed in 1955 and all that remains is the entrance at Marine Drive which will be instantly familiar to all those of us who have walked that way. It is unlikely to operate again due to landslides in the area.

I'm not sure of the exact date of the above postcard. It hasn't been used, but the publisher is S. Hildersheimer who were producing cards between 1881 and 1920.

One of the trams is currently at Crich Tramway Museum and is shown on a 1997 postcard below.

Today, anyone wanted to go to Port Soderick is likely to get the Steam Train whose fate has been better than a lot of the transport on the Isle of Man.

Rainhill Village

After the warning in my previous post, I've decided to show something today which was not destroyed by disaster, war or terrorism but simple human error.

I doubt many of you will have heard of Rainhill. If you have I can almost guarantee you are either a) a resident or ex resident of the town, b) a train buff, c ) a Ripperologist/Victorian murder aficionada d) a Mel C fan.
I'm in  group a though I do lurk on Casebook from time to time.

I was brought up in Rainhill and lived there until I was 18 and the above image is one of my enduring memories of the town. Those of you in group b will know that Rainhill was the site of the Locomotive Trials in 1829 where Stephenson's Rocket was declared the winner and Britain was changed forever.

In 1979 there was an exhibition celebrating 150 years since the trials took place and the above mural was erected in a prominent place in the village (now occupied by the Co-Op Supermarket). I used to see it everyday when I went I to playschool and reception class and I loved it. It had pride of place in the town until 1981 when it was dismantled. Sadly it was stored away whilst wet and rotted away to nothing. Ironically the Rocket itself can still be seen in the Science Museum.

A Question of Taste

I should probably get this out of the way now. Some of the posts in here may be in questionable taste. After all many of the places mentioned in the blog will have been abandoned due to war, invasion, natural or man-made disasters or poverty. I make no apologies for this.
I will say only that postcards are a historical record, sometimes the only historical record of a place, and I believe they deserve to be shown.

An introduction

So what's this blog about then?

I've been collecting postcards for over 30 years and those which fascinate the most are of places which have long gone or changed beyond recognition or which have a "time capsule" moment forever placing them at a specific moment and they are the postcards I will write about here.

They aren't all going to be as extreme as the Centralia card, some of them may just show a building or two which have been pulled down, some may show places which are used for a different purpose and some may just be places which changed names. The one thing they have in common is that you couldn't post a card with that exact same image today.   

Centralia, PA

The above image is a postcard of Centralia, Pennsylvania dated 1914. A postcard from a place which no longer has a ZIP code.

Centralia was a mining town in the sate of Pennsylvania and although never a bustling place, it did have a sizeable population with hotels, churches and, as seen in the postcard, shops and tree-lined avenues.
The 20th century was not kind to the town, as WWI raged on, young men who normally have been working in the mines were enlisted and mining declined, there was further tragedy in 1929 when The Wall Street crash resulted in five mines being closed.
Worse was yet to come when in 1962 a coal seam fire ignited and is still burning today. This led to the town being almost totally abandoned and most of the buildings levelled. In 2013 there were 7 people living in the town and once these people leave it is unlikely the place will ever have a permanent  population again, though it remains a popular tourist destination.