London's lost third railway network
Dr Hillary Shaw
Visiting Fellow - Centre for Urban Research on Austerity at Dept of Politics and Public Policy De Montfort University
Besides the London underground and the surface railways, London once had a third rail network; its tramways. Serving predominantly the less wealthy NE and SE of the city, and almost totally excluded from both the City and the affluent West End, they provided a comprehensive network going to many places where the other rail systems did not penetrate.
They were of course ripped up because they held up the vehicular road traffic too much, but how many car journeys could have been eliminated from Greater London if we still had this network. Of course London is now re-discovering the merits of suburban tram systems, e.g. the system from Wimbledon through Croydon, but as with many rail systems it's a shame to only find these lines are in fact rather useful once we've ripped them up.
Lines now mapped at,
https://fooddeserts.org/images/PageFfnLondon.htm
Source for route maps - Trams in Inner North London, DW Willoughby & ER Oakley, published by the authors, 1980.
PS this map attempts to show the 1930s tram network at its maximum extent - however the final outer limits of the system are hard to ascertain precisely, and are often missed off the edges of maps (for the sake of larger scale in the centre)- if anyone knows of any missed routes, please advise.