The Barnsley and District Electric Traction Co was an electric tramway network serving the town of

Barnsley Barnsley () is a market town in South Yorkshire, England. As the main settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley and the fourth largest settlement in South Yorkshire. In Barnsley, the population was 96,888 while the wider Borough has ...

South Yorkshire South Yorkshire is a ceremonial and metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. The county has four council areas which are the cities of Doncaster and Sheffield as well as the boroughs of Barnsley and Rotherham. In N ...

. The tramway was a subsidiary of the British Electric Traction and services begun on 31 October 1902. In early 1898, three companies had applied for local tramway systems, the Barnsley Corporation applied in 1900 for a larger network than it finally built. In 1913, the company began to run motor buses to

Hoyland Hoyland is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley in South Yorkshire, England. The town developed from the hamlets of Upper Hoyland, Hoyland and Hoyland Common. The town has also been known as ''Nether Hoyland''. That name was given t ...

and other points, Electric was dropped form the company name in 1919. the Barnsley company changed its name to Yorkshire Traction Co. in 1928 and abandoned tramway operation in 1930. Ignoring Oxford and Bristol, YTC is the largest bus operator to have originated from a tramway company in England.

The network

The Barnsley electric tramway was a

standard gauge A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), International gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in Europe, and SGR in Ea ...

line, running from Smithies (near Monk Bretton Colliery) to the south of Barnsley, 2 miles south of the town centre to two termini, at Worsbrough Bridge and Worsbough Dale with a junction at the crossroads of Upper Sheffield Road and Kingwell Road at the Cutting End by the present day Cutting Edge public house. The line ran from the

level crossing A level crossing is an intersection where a railway line crosses a road, Trail, path, or (in rare situations) airport runway, at the same level, as opposed to the railway line crossing over or under using an Overpass#Railway, overpass ...

on Old Mill Lane, down the Barnsley town centre to Sheffield Road and split in two termini down Park Road (Worsbrough) and High Street. At the road junction south of Market Place, the left fork was occupied by the Dearne & District. Both networks were virtually next to each other at this point but never connected.

Extensions

The Barnsley tramway was to be larger than it actually were but the

Great Central Railway The Great Central Railway in England was formed when the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway changed its name in 1897, anticipating the opening in 1899 of its London Extension. On 1 January 1923, the company was grouped into the ...

company refused the passing of tramway tracks of its own network, and prevented authorised lines to be built. One of these lines was to push the tramway ''away'' from Barnsley towards Carlton Road to the North. Other extensions were to extend the tramway into a loop on Park Road (Barnsley) in Locke Park and south from Worsborough Bridge down Park Road (Worsbrough) to Hoyland Common, this extension was also blocked by the GCR.

Tram depots

Sheffield Road shed

The shed stood next to the 1920s bus garage of the same company to the south of Barnsley town centre. The shed had four running tracks and an extensive yard. Overhaul workshops were situated to the back of the shed. At the end of tramway operations the depot became a bus depot exclusively, passing to

Stagecoach Yorkshire Stagecoach Yorkshire is an operating division of Stagecoach Group. It was formed in 2005 to take over the former Traction Group fleets in Yorkshire by Stagecoach Group, which took over Traction from Frank Carter on 14 December 2005; Yorkshi ...

and finally closing for housing development on 20 October 2008. Demolition work started in April 2009. Very little of the system survives today apart from a few sawn off overhead wire poles in the cutting of Upper Sheffield Road and the occasional piece of track unearthed during roadworks.

Rolling stock

The Barnsley & District used two types of vehicle: *13 four-wheeled double-deck tramcars. *1 demi-car. {{DEFAULTSORT:Barnsley And District Tramway Tram transport in England Barnsley Rail transport in South Yorkshire