Transport Photos of Fulham

In particular,there a couple of very interesting photos of rare subjects:

- the Metropolitan Asylum Board's tramway depot in fulham,replete with a fleet of horse trams - allegedly in the 1920s- for conveying the mentally ill down to a steamer connexion and onward transmission to isolatioin hulks (!) . Ihave never seen any reference at all in any of the very extensive tramway lterature to this operation.not even in the otherwise comprehensive history of hospitaltramways. Does anyone know any more?
- what appears to be an LBSC tank in Southern days calling at Chelsea and Fulham on the WLL. A Victoria to Willesden service?

On the second rarity, Middleton Press The West London Line (Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith) quotes the West London Extension Railway as being 1/6th owned by The Brighton as it was constituted by Act of 15.8.1859.

Better still, here's a page from the book itself, with a 1902 timetable showing the LBSCR service & giving the date SR trains stopped using the line.




Would be a rather useful link today, given the number of Chelski fans in Surrey & Chelsea & Fulham station site being right at the back of Stamford Bridge!

Chelsea & Fulham station was on the opposite side of Fulham Road, between Fulham and King's Roads.

There was certainly a tram operation at the asylum in Dartford www.workhouses.org.uk/MAB-JoyceGreen/

There were several asylums in Fulham, in the area where Charing Cross Hospital now stands www.jtp.co.uk/public/uploads/pdfs/hammersmith_riverside_a1_cpw_complete_set_first_10_s.pdf, and LCC trams did operate along the Fulham Palace Road, but I have never read of private operators using the tracks.

theblackferret - I have spent a happy morning with (1) Oakley's History of LCC tramways, (2) Capital transport's ditto, and (3) Voice's "Hospital Tramways. None of these mentions the Fulham operation and there is nothing on the maps that accompany them and indeed Voice's pretty comprehensive book shows the "Fulham" photograph as the Joyce Green depot. I concluded that the MAB Fulham article is plain wrong (and indeed the wording is curious - there seems to be some confusion between tramcar and the vehicles actually depicted which are based on the typical horse-drawn "Black maria" type used by the Metroplitan Police and which had no windows or very small ones at best - quite unlike the vehicles claimed to be lined up outside the MAB "Fulham" depot. ) It is also not clear where such a depot would have been located; again, the MAB article shows a completely different layout to the one in the photograph It would, in any case, have been a major cause for notice to see horse-drawn tramways on the streets of West London 20 years after the LCC horse routes had been converted. (And I imagine the LCC would not have been too keen to see the performance of its electric cars hindered by horse trams). So, most likely the Fulham claim is a load of rubbish based on sloppy research and mutual propping up by two wrong sources - the photo and the article! The most likely thing is that the Fulham operation relied on horsedrawn ambulances.

Thanks - now to tackle the bus and trolleybus photos (though those look more reliable!) May also be possible to pin down the Chelsea and Fulham station shot a bit more precisely (the Victoria service was so infrequent that one could almost fix the time of day...)