Saturday Variety

Helping Hornby’s  Horrors

Model Railway lovers were aghast at those losses. But in the corporate world dealings often involve sums of money that will scare the average bloke or bloke-ess beyond measure.

But if, domestically, you are a bit short of the readies, you can always sell something!

So Hornby have sold something.

£20 million should help a bit!

Easy peasy.

The snag comes when you have nothing left to sell and those who are bankrolling your struggling business want their money back!

There may be a few directorial fingers crossed in the Hornby boardroom! 

Hornby bought Scalextric in 1968; although Hornby then and Hornby now are very different beasts, corporately speaking.

Here, for the old people, are the Scalextric racing cars of 1957.

And today, things have changed somewhat.

Elderly Man Remembers

But not quite everything below!

Sheffield's last tram can on 8th October 1960 and fbb arrived in the city to pursue his studies just three years later. By then there was little to seen of the trams. A short section of reserved trackbed still lay unadopted on Abbeydale Road between Millhouses and Beauchief but, generally, the city was very quick to expunge tracked urban transport from history.

Here is the Harley Hotel at the bottom of Hounsfield Road.

It is still there today, but now trendy and called "The Harley",

In the old picture above you can just see the overhead which powered the trams up the hill to the University. Here you see it better.

,

Well actually you don't, because in the above shot track is still in situ but overhead has been 'recovered'. We will meet the premises on the right again in a jiffy.

Today's view is unrecognisable.

At the top of Hounsfield Road was a junction. Trams to Walkley went straight across Western Bank as below ...

... whilst trams for Crookes turned left. Because the pointwork in the overhead (called a 'frog' in tram-speak) was actuated for a left turn by the tram driver's notching up the power, trams would never be able to fork right to go to Walkley.

They needed all the power to climb the hill.

That's  why that man on the left has a little hut.  The frog had to be worked manually!

Here is the junction today, now with no exit to Western Bank.

Back to the old. 

fbb attended lectures in those terraced houses. By the time the picture below was taken, trams to Walkley had been withdrawn (see bollards far right) ...

... as the University had annexed Winter Street for its expansion. Here is a similar shot today. 

Following the former tracks to Walkley (right) ...

... we see what blocked the route for ever! fbb was part of the first cadre of students to "study" in that tower, now largely bereft of Uni teaching departments and replete with burgeoning admin offices.

If we cross the road and turn through 180 degrees we look back to the top of Hounsfieild Road.

Over there is the University bookshop, visited just once by fbb in his keen first year; and a greasy spoon caff (possibly known as Violet May's), cheaper than the Uni eateries and coffee emporia, thus very popular with the lucky few who could bag a seat.

Oddly, although there is now a wide walkway under the road, a crossing has re-appeared in recent years ...

... because those confounded students often crossed the busy Western Bank 'at grade', eschewing the diversion via ramps and colonised underpass, for the quick but death defying dash across four lanes of speeding traffic!

The bookshop and caff are long gone, but buses to Crookes still pass by whilst much diverted buses to Walkley now stop far beyond that tower.

Open Street Map shows the route today ...

... from the Harley (Hotel) bottom right to the (Arts) Tower top left, a microcosm ot the removal of trams and the domination of the ever expanding University over the last sixty years.

But as Welsh entrtainer Max Boyce was wont to say ...

... and fbb loudly echoes,

I Was There!

The Lego Play Area ...

... is already taking shape.

The "hut" will be repainted.

The wheels have been removed as has the black Lego underframe "plank". This now allows the bus to sit flat on the ground. Wheel arches are panelled over and cosmetic wheels will replace thise that came with the kit.

 Next Variety blog : Sunday 1st March