Oldham Corporation Passenger Transport
Leyland Titan PD1/3 (1947): Museum of Transport Greater Manchester (March 2025)
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Text: © Museum of Transport Greater Manchester (March 2025)
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History #
- 1880: Oldham Corporation built its first standard gauge horse tramway lines. However, the corporation did not operate them directly. Instead, they leased the lines to the Manchester Carriage and Tramways Company.
- 1899: The Oldham Corporation Act of 1899 granted the municipality the power to construct and directly operate its own electric tramway system.
- 1900: The first corporation operated electric tram route opened on 15 December, running from the Chadderton boundary to Rochdale Road.
- 1913: The Corporation experimented with its very first motorbuses, purchasing two petrol-electric vehicles to run a short route from the Town Hall to the Coppice.
- 1924: Permanent, regular motorbus services commenced to link Mumps and Hollinwood railway stations, expanding rapidly over the next decade to counter unregulated private competition.
- 1925: The corporation introduced a short-lived trolleybus system on 26 August to replace trams on the route to Ashton-under-Lyne. Due to severe vibration issues on cobbled streets, it was abandoned just over a year later in September 1926.
- 1933: In August, the department formally changed its name to Oldham Corporation Passenger Transport to reflect the massive growth of its bus network relative to the declining tramway system.
- 1946: Following delays caused by the Second World War, the very last municipal tram ran on 3 August, leaving Oldham as a purely bus-operated network.
- 1965: The corporation suffered a major operational blow when a Ministry of Transport inspection suddenly flagged mechanical defects in 97 of its buses, forcing the network to urgently borrow 45 vehicles from neighboring towns to keep services running.
- 1966: The long-standing traditional crimson and lake vehicle livery was modernized to a distinctive pommard (a deep claret/burgundy red) and cream colour scheme.
- 1969: At midnight on the 31 October, Oldham Corporation Passenger Transport officially ceased to exist. On the 1 November, its entire fleet, assets, and routes were absorbed into the newly created SELNEC PTE (South East Lancashire and North East Cheshire Passenger Transport Executive), which consolidated municipal transport across the Greater Manchester region.
Leyland Titan PD2/20 (1957): Museum of Transport Greater Manchester (March 2025)
Click image to enlarge
Text: © Museum of Transport Greater Manchester (March 2025)
Click image to enlarge