ONE of the intriguing things about Volks Electric Railway at Brighton is
that no one really knows how old the cars are, or to what extent they have
been rebuilt. Most of them were built and then rebuilt by Magnus Volk himself,
in his workshop under the cliff, and he knew each car so well that he had
no need of written records. Unfortunately, most of this knowledge died with
him and was never committed to paper, a situation which can be tantalising
both to the amateur historian and to the staff. The present writer took
it as a challenge, and with the aid of Messrs. J. H. Price, J. H. Meredith
and A. G. Wells has tried to unravel the story and attempt a conjectural
history of the cars known to have served on the line, based partly on a
study of old postcards and photographs. The result must not he taken at
authoritative, and any comments from readers will be welcomed, particularly
about the early rebuildings.
The little 2 ft. gauge car of 1883, with which the line opened, had a working life of only six months and was not incorporated into the "permanent" fleet. Instead, two new vehicles (1 and 2) were obtained in 1884, each with one Siemens 10 h.p. motor, with chain drive to one axle and belt drive from that to the other. A full description of these cars is given on these pages, and both cars (being solidly built in mahogany) lasted until 1940, largely unaltered, though the silk curtains and tassels of 1884 had long since disappeared.
Both spent the war years in store, and were then dismantled in 1948 or early
1949 at Lewes Road trolleybus depot and
the wheels kept as spares. The next two cars arrived in 1892, and were numbered
3 and 4. As built, they were semi-open cars with cross bench seats, of which
the centre pairs could be closed in by sliding doors: the outer pairs of
seats were on open platforms of unequal length. Their main interest was
in their mechanical design, evolved by Volk's friend and fellow-inventor
Anthony Reckenzaun. Each car had a single motor mounted on the chassis members,
driving one axle at right-angles through a set of Reckenzaun's patent worm
gear, which consisted of a steel worm meshing with a phosphor-bronze worm-wheel,
enclosed in an oil-bath. The entire assembly was supplied by Greenwood and
Bailey Ltd.
of Leeds, and is illustrated in 'Electric Railways and Tramways' bv Philip
Dawson, published by 'Engineering' in I897.
The position of the motor, shaft and gear assembly was such that in one
compartment passengers were confronted
by a wooden bar with the words Warning Step Over Shaft, below which was
the shaft in a tube. Despite Reckenzaun's claim that his worm gears would
run for 20 years without renewal, they were somewhat ahead of contemporary
metallurgical science and were replaced by new equipments nine years later,
though their inventor did not live to see it. Both cars were rebuilt with
cross-bench seats and sliding doors, but whereas No. 3 still has its original
bulkheads (one with a door-opening, the other without). No. 4 has a new
body of the 5-8 type. This leaves No. 3 as the oldest surviving car built
by Volk, and accounts for the choice of this car to carry the 80th birthday
decorations of 1963.
The next car, built in 1897, was a four-window saloon with end loading platforms
and bulkhead doors. It exemplified
Magnus Volk's genius for improvisation, for its first power unit was none
other than the Siemens dynamo of 1884, with
the same chain-and-belt drive as in the 1884 cars 1 and 2. Magnus Volk felt
that the car powered by this historic
machine should have the honour of being No. 1, and the original car of this
number became No.5. Saloon car No. 1 of 1897. of which no good photographs
seem to exist, was withdrawn in 1928 and replaced by a new car, and the
former No. 1 of 1884 then resumed its original number, leaving the
number 5 vacant.
In 1901 the railway was extended from Paston Place to Black Rock, the full
service now requiring eight cars instead of
four. This brought three additional cars (Nos. 6 to 8), semi-open vehicles
seating 32 persons on eight full-width cross
benches, four in the central sliding-door compartments and two on each platform,
of which one faced inward and used the dash as backrest; the leading passengers
thus rode with their backs to the direction of travel. Simple and reliable
tramway equipments were now on the market, and each car received one 8 h.p.
tramway motor driving one axle through straight spur gearing. Two
further equipments of the same type were bought for cars 3 and and 4, and
all five sets are still in use: the motors bear a plate reading "Compagnie
Electrique Beige. Liege." The cars have been rebuilt over the year
with longer underframes and platforms, seating four more persons on each
platform and bringing the total to 40.
Since the railway did not appear in Board of Trade statistics until 1918
we do not have any fleet totals for the years
1901-1914. However, one more car was built during these years, probably
to allow a reserve for maintenance needs; this was No. 9. a cross-bench
car with ten benches and with glazed bulkheads at the second and fourth
stanchions. A fine photograph of this car when new. probably in 1911, appears
in Conrad's Volk's book Magnus Volk of Brighton, and shows it to be considerably
longer than the others. It was the first car in the fleet to seat 40 passengers
instead of 32; 40 seats later became the standard capacity, and cars 3.
4 and 6-8 were lengthened to suit. No. 9 was was built as a semi-open car.
with glazed bulkheads between the second and fourth pairs of back-to-back
seats, and had sliding
glazed screens on the seaward side only.
Many years later these screen were removed, and the car became an open-sided
cross bench summer car with ten benches. The fleet then remained at nine
cars until 1926. but a tenth car (No. 10) arrived in 1927. This was a ton-bench
open car without glazed bulkheads, and eventually replaced No. 1 of 1897.
No. 5 of 1884 became No. 1, and gave its
latter-day number to a new car of 1930 intended for use in winter. The new
No. 5. whose body was built at Kelsey's Motor Works in Hove (now Commercial
Transport Bodies, Ltd.), was a saloon with tramcar-type dashes and no outside
seats, but with upholstered cushioned seats for 24 inside; it had three
large windows set in each flush-panelled side, and was painted Royal blue
and cream instead of the usual stain-and-varnish.
Dashes and panels were in light steel, but after eight years' wartime storage the salt air of Brighton had corroded the panels to such an extent that the body was a complete write-off. It was dismantled in 1948 or early 1949, the wheels and electrical parts being kept as spares, and no metal cars have run on the line since.
On July 2nd. 1940. the beaches were closed by the Government and the cars
were trapped by the barbed-wire entanglements in the car shed at Paston
Place, though one may have been away in the workshop at the time. Here they
remained until June 30th, 1947. when the first one was taken to Lewes Road
depot, followed by the other nine. Three were beyond repair (Nos. 1. 2 and
5) and only seven could be made available for service: these were the former
3. 4, 6. 7. 8. 9 and 10. but the Corporation promptly closed the gaps in
the sequence by numbering cars 8. 9 and 10 as 5. 2 and 1 respectively, giving
a fleet of two open cars (1 and 2) and five of the semi-open type (3 to
7), all of which run with these numbers today.
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