Remembering when the final tram ran through Dundee’s streets.

5,000 people witnessed Car 23’s emotional final journey in 1956

The golden age of Dundee’s trams is being remembered in a new publication.

Lost Tramways Of Scotland: Dundee will be published on Thursday and features more than 40 images from the network, which extended to Downfield, Maryfield, Lochee and Ninewells.

The last trams in the city were taken out of service in October 1956, ending a near-80 year run.

More than 5,000 people witnessed Car No 23’s emotional final journey from Maryfield to the Lochee depot, accompanied by the moving strains of We’re No Awa’ Tae Bide Awa’ and Will Ye No Come Back Again.

Author Peter Waller has been writing and publishing on transport history for more than two decades and said the book provided a visual glimpse into the social history of the city from the late 19th to the mid-20th Centuries.

Mr Waller said: “Dundee was widely considered to be one of the more secure services in the British Isles. The system’s Achilles’ heel was, however, the age of the fleet.”

Dundee’s first horse-drawn tram route – from Perth Road/windsor Street to Reform Street – opened in 1877.

By 1880 the operator, Dundee and District Tramways Company, opened routes to Lochee, Stobswell and Baxter Park, which were all key areas of the large manufacturers in the city.

The system had its limitations, not least due to the costs of keeping the horses and the hilly terrain.

A service of electric cars was launched on the Perth Road route in June 1900 and by 1902 both horse and steam trams across the city were replaced.

Over the decades, the tram routes were extended in line with the expansion of the city and the peak of the network was in the 1930s, when 79 tramways were in operation.

By 1951 many of the trams had not been updated and at least a third of the stock was more than 50 years old.

The city limits had also extended beyond that of the tram route and it was decided the future of public transport in Dundee lay with buses.

Transport consultant Colonel R Mccreary advocated abandoning the tramway system on October 20 1956.

All of the remaining cars were reduced to scrap by burning.

Mr Waller said the book included a wealth of original photographs from the collection of the Online Transport Archive, many appearing in print for the first time.

The title also features coverage of tram models and manufacturers, daily operation and the history of the network.

It is part of Graffeg’s Lost Tramways series – documenting how such systems developed, how they served and affected their communities and how their growth typically ran alongside the progress of an expanding and modernising city.

A horse-drawn tram at Dundee Museum of Transport, left. George Maxwell, above, was a tram conductor.