CLASSIC ADVENTURE
Team PC takes a journey back in time to right now… visiting the island’s extraordinary working heritage
It's the Isle of Man’s best kept secret. Alongside the TT races and the amazing scenery there’s a third string (or leg) to the island’s bow, its transport and industrial heritage. Man is home to the world’s oldest tram… you can take a trip on it, 15 miles from Ramsey to Douglas on a fully functioning tram network, while there’s even a route up a mountain. It has the last surviving horse tram service in Europe (one of two in the world) and a functioning steam railway, too.
The island also plays host to the largest water wheel (still working) and built the smallest car (factory still there). It’s a miracle these artefacts and activities still survive in a place that is 30 miles by 11, but they do and it’s more than a living museum, the transport infrastructure is still run as a service.
Yet nobody seems know about them, so if you go and you take a trip or make a visit, you’ll have plenty of room. If the world had any idea these things all existed here, in such a small area, the place would be rammed.
DANNY HOPKINS
We start at the Laxey Wheel, the world’s largest water wheel, and what a thing it is. Still in operation, it is a marvel, a wonder of the industrial world. It’s the perfect place to start, but it is only one cog in the Isle of Man’s industrial history. We head off in search of clattery old trams, and immediately come face to face with one.
2023 is a year of celebration – 150 years of the Isle of Man Steam Railway and 130 years of the Manx Electric Railway. Significant because both entities survive and thrive pretty much as envisaged. True, the steam railway to Peel and Ramsey was ripped up in the Sixties, but largely… it’s all still there. The electric tram network, in particular, fascinates. It is a double track mainline that runs alongside the road from the centre of Douglas to the centre of Ramsey. From the hi-tech Nineties cabin of my Mitsubishi GTO, every 20 minutes or so as I drive this road I need to double take as a vision of electric Victoriana rattles past, or I rattle past it. It’s unique, and yet Europe used to be covered in these roadside tramways running from village to village… pretty much all now gone.
At Laxey, halfway between Douglas and Ramsey, the branch line that takes tourists up to the summit of the 2037ft Snaefell Mountain leaves the main line. Once again it is operated by 100+ year-old tramcars, doing the job they have done for over 128 years. Sedate is the word I would use to describe progress, but to be honest, as a contrast to the fren
