While Edinburgh waits and waits for its tram, Glasgow celebrates the 50^th anniversary of the emotional last journey of the the city’s much loved Coronation trams.

Capital city caged: a view through the tramworks

It has to be said there is not much enthusiasm for the tram in the capital city right now but take heart Edinburgh. Glasgow’s Riverside museum holds a reminder that a well-run and beautifully designed tram can turn hearts and heads.

In fact Glasgow was the last city in Britain to abandon tram travel – by 1962 an abundant supply of diesel and petrol made the electrified system seem outdated. Edinburgh had already made the switch to buses by 1956. But when it was introduced in 1938 the Coronation tram was the very height of art deco streamlined modernity.

You can experience what it might have been like to make a tram journey by climbing aboard one of the lovingly restored trams in Glasgow’s Riverside Museum. And listen to the Walking Heads podcast. It’s a great story, first produced as one of Five Easy Pieces for Social Media Week Glasgow. John Messner, Riverside curator of transport and technology, vividly evokes an era when few people had cars but tram passengers could enjoy “a level of sophistication not found outside a Cunard liner”.

There’s true Glasgow pride in the story of the Coronation – “one of the best designs in Britain” – which provided a level of comfort and ease to everyone, travelling all over the city at an affordable price: “There was no class distinction on the tram, everyone paid the same fare ”.

Ironically the increasing price and pollution of diesel is the reason many cities across Europe are now reintroducing trams which carry more passengers than buses.  So far Glasgow has no plans to bring back the trams. But it will be interesting to see how many people come out to see the maiden voyage of Edinburgh’s tram along Princes Street in 2014 – in Glasgow an astonishing crowd of 250,000 people lined the streets to wave goodbye to the Coronation Tram in 1962.