Brian Longworth

Historian and expert on trams Born: September 25, 1943; Died: September 24, 2016 BRIAN Longworth, who has died aged 72, played major roles in Scotland and at the National Tramway Museum in Derbyshire, in ensuring that Glasgow trams and their related archives would be preserved for the study and edification of future generations. Though he travelled the world to see tramway systems at first hand, he once confessed: “They all look the same.” Glasgow’s tramway system was his first and abiding interest.

His deep knowledge of trams ran to both the academic and the practical. Four decades ago, he qualified as a volunteer tram driver at the National Tramway Museum. Such was his skill that, in 2005, he capped a then-lifetime experience by being appointed a driving instructor at the Tramway Museum at Crich, training a new generation to handle the vintage fleet.

His leadership in his field saw him at various time become chairman of the Scottish Tramway and Transport Society, as well as help establish and run the Scottish International Tramway Association. He was also a past chairman of Summerlee Transport Group, the working group sustaining Scotland’s only working tramway, based at Coatbridge.

Preserving records was a real passion. His personal effort saw an enormous quantity of records and archival material saved when, in 1973, Glasgow Corporation Transport was subsumed within the Greater Glasgow Passenger Transport Executive.

His archival talents were taken up by the National Tramway Museum and he also played a leading role in organising the growing records of Glasgow Vintage Vehicles Trust at its headquarters in the one-time Bridgeton bus garage. Until his illness, he worked voluntarily at the Museum of Transport in Kelvin Hall, and then at Riverside Museum.

Brian Martin Longworth, an only child, was born in Toronto, Canada, wryly pointing out that he first saw life “not far from a street car depot”. His father, involved in the Admiralty, had been posted to North America early in the Second World War. The family moved back to the UK initially to Portsmouth, before settling in Scotstoun, Glasgow.

His earliest tram memory, he would recall, was being taken by his mother on a tram to Uddingston, a service that ceased in summer 1948.

Educated at Hutchesons’ Boys’ Grammar School, he joined Glasgow Corporation Transport in 1965. It was there that his latent talent for the operation of transport became evident.

Mr Longworth was one of a group who helped rescue the body of Glasgow car 1016 from Braidwood, Lanarkshire. He also helped to restore a Lanarkshire Tramways car. The body of Lanarkshire 53 had been discovered by fellow enthusiast Dr Struan Robertson on a farm near Beith. The fully rebuilt tram now operates daily as one of a fleet at Summerlee, near Coatbridge.

The dream of seeing vintage trams preserved in running order drove him. Frustrated by what he saw as inactivity on this front, he helped found the Scottish International Tramway Association, based at Irvine, with the intention of seeing a waterside service established.

While this came to nothing, he successfully put his weight behind gaining a running tram line at Summerlee Industrial Museum at Coatbridge, and was instrumental in rescuing the body of Glasgow school tram 1017 from a garden in Cambuslang, and ultimately seeing it running again. His pioneering work also ensured that a stock of original Glasgow Transport uniforms and transport items have been preserved for use.

For all his global knowledge of trams, he was no great fan of other tramways. He enjoyed visiting them, but would remark that since most of the world’s trams are made by just a few manufacturers, systems in so many places now operate the same types of vehicles.

A private individual, Mr Longworth was quiet, self-effacing and modest in the extreme. Along with transport colleague Geoff Price, he began the gargantuan task of preparing a book recording the complete development of public transport in Glasgow from the time of the Cluthas to the present day.

In his own way, he was a modernist, and in 1974, had contributed to New Life For The Subway, a lobbying document detailing how the existing subway could be made to break out of its circle into a northern loop.

Mr Longworth lived in Cumbernauld and had been ill for some time. Telephone 0141-302 6000 or by e-mail at announcements@heraldandtimes.co.uk