John Hannavy's history of the gas tram introduces a transport technology that briefly promised quieter, smoother travel than horses or street locomotives. Advocates emphasized the low capital cost of conversion because operators did not need the overhead catenary required by electric traction. Systems operated in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, while projects were proposed in France, New Zealand, and the United States. Most burned domestic town gas supplied by local gasworks and were promoted as cheap to run. The book then connects those experiments to modern biomethane and hydrogen projects, making the episode useful as both industrial history and a reminder that apparently new energy transitions can revive much older engineering paths.
Notable Point · 2:56:12-2:57:43
Why gas trams briefly looked like a transport breakthrough
A book review recovers the late nineteenth-century gas tram as a low-capital alternative to horse, steam, and electric street transport.