NOSTALGIA: Can you solve this Portsmouth tram poser?
My colleague Bob Hind and his co-author Barry Cox are writing a book about the trams that travelled over Portsdown Hill to Horndean.
Above is a photograph of a northbound tram leaving the corporation tracks at Cosham in the 1930s.
The double-track in the left foreground are those of the Portsdown & Horndean Light Railway which left the corporation lines and travelled west of the corporation line then over the railway and on north up and over Portsdown Hill.
On the map from SE Harrison’s Tramways of Portsmouth we see these lines marked OOO but nothing of the line where the tram is.
The Cosham Compound alongside the railway gates west of Portsmouth Road can be seen in the distance. The compound had its own in and out tracks so the track where the tram is has nothing to do with that.
The lines to the left of the map marked X X X is a reserved track supposedly laid in 1932 to take the P&HLR from Portscreek straight on to the direct line to Cosham. We think the map is incorrect.
Nothing seems to fit. If you can work it out then we would really like to know more.