Beneath the bumper-to-bumper traffic on Dublin's Stanley Street lies a spectral urban shadow - the faint, near-missable remains of long-forgotten tramlines, arguably the root of our capital city's most successful and enviable public transport system. These trams form a blurred backdrop in most photographs of early 20thcentury Dublin. They may be gone forever, but the 21st-century LUAS, so we are told, will fulfil their legacy.
The last tram snaked its way around the Hill of Howth until it was replaced by a bus in 1959. Although an unprecedented number of commuters travelled on the Hill of Howth trams during their last weeks of service, trams were considered too cumbersome and expensive in post-war Ireland. Why rumble along on a tram when a bus, with its blackening exhaust fumes, could get you there quicker? Who knew that decades later trams would be the answer to the congestion on our city streets?
The Hill of Howth tramway was a faded part of urban folklore. But now Michael Corcoran, a retired draughtsman who spent all 48 years of his working life in Dublin County Council and Dublin Corporation, has compiled a history of Dublin's trams: Through Streets Broad & Narrow. "Trams make a city," he says. "Ours was a mighty system with over 300 vehicles . . . and we threw it all away."
The book is less a colourful coffee table tome than a text-heavy study of how our tramways provide a glimpse into Ireland's social and industrial history. No detail is too obscure or irrelevant. The transport enthusiast will be enthralled. The (conscientious) layman will be mesmerised. Corcoran even includes a picture of the grave of an unidentified man who died working on the Dollymount to Howth tramway. His colleagues marked his grave with two lengths of tram rail.
Dublin's tramway system reached its zenith during the 1920s, surviving the poverty and fallout from the Great War. It even managed to kick-start a programme of renewal before the war ended in 1918, which, amazingly, continued through the upheavals of 1920 to 1923. At this time, the tramway was one of the few services people could almost take for granted, no small testament to those who operated it.
But talk about ghosts of the past coming back to haunt us: "Dublin, like most cities, lacked a convenient and comprehensive public transport system to move large numbers of people cheaply and efficiently into and out of the city centre," Corcoran writes. In 1834, therefore, horse-drawn cars, providing a regular service, were introduced by Dublin businessmen, a concept which had been pioneered in Paris in 1662 by Blaise Pascal.
The modern tram, which ran on wooden beams, was designed in New York in 1832 by an Irish coach-builder named John Stephenson. This gave the passenger a smoother ride and an easier draught for the horse. In 1859, this model crossed the Atlantic, spreading through Europe. In the 1870s, William Barrington, managing director of the Dublin Tramways Company, waxed lyrical about his company. How novel they were: "The value of tramways is now genuinely admitted; but as a boon to the poor citizens and their families who live in dark, noisome and often pestilential lanes and alleys, who have now but little chance of refreshing their eyes with the bloom of the country scenery; or invigorating their emaciated frames with the sweet breath of heaven in a pure ozonic atmosphere, tramways could not be too much praised".
Yet, the introduction of electric trams in 1896, Corcoran writes, turned into a mud-slinging match: "For any city to pioneer electric tramway development was one thing, but in the capital of an agricultural country, where there were sure to be powerful vested interests ranged against it, it was another". Even members of the upper classes joined in, expressing fears that electric trams would frighten horses.
Corcoran, a robust 70, who has been back working part-time at Dublin Corporation for over a year "bridging the historical gap", also volunteers at the National Transport Museum in Howth. He has, in fact, been part of the transport preservation movement since 1949. Still, of all the trams that made up the urban landscape during the last century, there are now only five in the transport museum and one preserved in Wicklow.
"What they didn't scrap, they exported," Corcoran says. "The authorities are totally blind to that. We've been fighting an uphill battle. We've faced a culture of hostility - a throwback to deValera's Ireland. The values and ethos of rural culture took priority, unlike the urban culture of the middle classes. Tramways involved artisans, mechanics and daily labourers. Their Ireland was the country of The Quiet Man. "Now, there's much more support from rural communities, with the preservation of farm machinery. I'm amazed that in other countries, from Australia and the US to Italy and the UK, they've salvaged, retained and overhauled a vast number of trams. There is a tram originally built in 1931 that is still in use in Milan. We built trams much later that have been discarded."
Ireland had three urban electric tramways in Belfast, Cork and Dublin. Corcoran says that the first two have been the subject of two books, but the latter has not. This may be explained by the loss of the Dublin United Tramways Company's early records when its headquarters was destroyed during the Civil War of 1922. But it's more likely that the words "transport" and "museum" do not rank highly on the cultural "barometer". "Transport enthusiasts have an anorak image in many people's eyes," Corcoran acknowledges. "The media never recognised this as being newsworthy. "No section of Irish media has a transport correspondent. Today's trade unionists don't know the debt they owe the tramway men who fought against appalling working conditions as far back as before the First World War. They should pay tribute to them."
Braving cold winters and low pay, Dublin's tram drivers were embroiled in industrial disputes as early as 1873. "I fear the men's constitutions will ere long give way if this scandalous system is continued," according to one letter to a newspaper in 1898. "The poor tram men never get a day, not even a Sunday to attend demonstrations against poor working conditions, and have to do without a particle of food the whole day long."
But the tram workers "Lock Out" of 1913 was, perhaps, a turning point in the country's industrial relations.
Sean O'Casey wrote in Drums Under the Windows: "On a bright and sunny day, August 26th, to be exact, while all Dublin was harnessing itself into its best for the Horse Show, the trams suddenly stopped. Drivers and conductors left them standing wherever they happened to be at a given time of the day when the strike commenced . . . They came out bravely, marching steadily towards hunger, harm and hostility."
Although this scene is also depicted in James Plunkett's Big Jim, these accounts fail to convey that only around 700 out of 1,700 staff took part in the strike which pitted William Martin Murphy, chairman of the Dublin United Tramways Company, against James Larkin. Embittered and worn down, the workers were eventually forced back to work on January 19th, 1914. But the playing field had changed forever.
The employers had been duly frightened, understanding that in time the workers would come to harness their own power as a united force. The biggest losers were the Dublin Metropolitan Police, whose brutality earned the unwavering hatred of the strikers. Many of the workers, meanwhile, became members or sympathisers of the Irish Citizen Army, the revolutionary organisation most closely associated with the labour movement.
Today, the few remaining trams - polished, waxed and refurbished - stand in the National Transport Museum, along with buses and vintage milk vans, like unwanted toys.
Some are used for films, most recently in the remake of The Magnificent Ambersons. Others, however, are not always accurately portrayed. "The tram shown in Michael Collins was hopelessly anachronistic," Corcoran says. "We did our best to put them on the right track, if you'll excuse the pun. But that type of tram did not appear on the streets of Dublin until the year after Michael Collins died."
The Leyland Titan is one of the museum's forgotten stars. Although it's a bus - well, nobody's perfect - it was bought in 1937 by the Dublin United Tramway Company, which also branched out into buses. The green and cream bus can still be seen every 10 years, making its original journey from College Green to Crumlin. (Transport enthusiasts, with or without anoraks, will have to wait until 2007 for the next trip.)
In the meantime, the battle to preserve and restore this heritage continues.
The tarnished jewel in the museum's crown is the Dublin United Tramway Company's 1901 Director's Tram, which awaits restoration. In its heyday, it was used by the director and his guests. It boasted pillars styled as classical columns, celtic carvings on wooden panels, etchings of Dublin street scenes on the windows, plush soft furnishings, brass fixtures and folding tables supported by statuesque female figures.
Here's the bad news. It was set on fire by vandals before being acquired by the museum in 1988. Here's the rest of the bad news. In 1995, the museum proposed a four-year millennium restoration project, but was turned down. The body of the tram cost £160 to build in 1901. Cleary's furnishing bill came to £387. "It was the perfect interface of technology and art," Corcoran says, adding wistfully, "it was magnificent".
Through Streets Broad and Narrow, by Michael Corcoran, is published by Midland (£19.99)
The National Transport Museum, in Howth, Co Dublin, is open on Saturdays (11 a.m. to 5 p.m.) and Sundays (2 p.m. to 5 p.m.). Tel: 01-8320427