General Themes
Transport
By Sheila Livingstone
Barns o' Clyde was originally served by the road which ran from Glasgow Cross to Dumbarton, and on to the western Highlands. It became a turnpike road with tolls in 1776. It was a rough and un-metalled surface and travellers had to use fords to cross streams and other water courses along the way - weather permitting!
Clydebank's Roads
With the growth of the new town around the Clydebank Shipyard, the road was named Glasgow Road up to its junction with Kilbowie Road, and Dumbarton Road from that point westwards. It became the A814 when roads were first numbered in 1920. During the Depression in the 1920s, the contractor Sir Robert McAlpine & Sons took on unemployed men to build the A82, also known as the Great Western Boulevard. This dual carriageway ran from Anniesland Cross to Bowling and passed north of Kilbowie Road.
Clydebank's road traffic was mainly horse-drawn in the early days and consisted of carts, carriages, and horse buses. A horse-drawn stagecoach operated between Duntocher and Glasgow, via Canniesburn in Bearsden.
Cars and Buses
When motor transport was introduced it caused alarm; newspaper reports in 1910 mention vehicles speeding at over 12 miles per hour! Motor buses appeared in the town in the 1920s. A local firm, Clydebank Motors, also ran charabancs - closed or open-topped - which were popular with local organisations for annual outings to Balloch or Helensburgh. In the 1930s Glasgow Corporation extended its bus routes into Clydebank, despite opposition from the railway companies. The Scottish Motor Traction Company (SMT), which had a bus depot in Old Kilpatrick, followed suit. In 2004, bus services in and around Clydebank are provided by a number of operating companies.
Trams
Tram cars began running to Clydebank in 1903, when the Burgh Commissioners asked Glasgow Corporation to extend its lines from Yoker. The first route terminated at Bon Accord Street close to the entrance to John Brown's Shipyard. In 1904 the tramway was extended to Dalmuir and in 1915 to Dalmuir West. The Forth and Clyde Canal bridge prevented it from going further but in 1908 the Dumbartonshire Tramways Service linked Dalmuir to Balloch and passengers changed trams. The fare to Balloch was between a penny to threepence, depending on where the passenger boarded the tram.
The route from Glasgow Road to Radnor Park was blocked to trams by the railway bridge and the canal bascule bridge on Kilbowie Road. Despite the replacement of the bascule bridge with a metal swing bridge in 1916, it was 1924 before Glasgow Corporation found a solution, introducing a single-deck tramcar on the route. The tramline was extended to Duntocher but this closed in 1949 and was replaced with an SMT bus service. Another single-deck tram ran from Clydebank to Partick and was nicknamed the "wee baldie".
Tramcars carried thousands of passengers through the years, but with the upsurge in car ownership their days were numbered. The last tram ran in the burgh streets in 1962, after which the rails were stripped out and the cobbles lifted.
The River
There were many ferry services operating on the River Clyde before the 1870s. A ferry linking Brickhouse in Dalmuir with the south bank of the river was withdrawn in 1870, and Bankies had to make do with services beyond the burgh boundaries. The Clyde Navigation Trust acquired the Erskine Ferry in 1911 and added a vehicle ferry boat to the old passenger service to Old Kilpatrick. It was withdrawn with the opening of the Erskine Bridge in July 1971. The Renfrew Ferry, which has linked Yoker with the south bank of the river for more than 500 years, carries 200,000 passengers each year at the beginning of the 21st century.
Up to six steamers sailed daily to and from Glasgow's Broomielaw to Dumbarton during the 19th century, but they were not provided with a landing stage at Clydebank. Over the years several attempts were made to have a pier built, but these were stymied by the Clyde Navigation Trust - the waterfront was too valuable as an asset for industry.
Materials were carried by river to build J & G Thomson's shipyard and when Rothesay Dock opened in 1907 minerals were unloaded there. The development plans of Clydebank rebuilt, 2003-2010 should open up the riverside to people and to boats.
Canals
The Forth and Clyde Canal was opened in 1790 and closed to traffic in 1954. A spur, the Cart Junction Canal, was opened in 1839. It travelled for a quarter of a mile from the Forth and Clyde at Whitecrook to the River Clyde and was used to carry building materials to J & G Thomson's Clydebank Shipyard. It was superseded by the railways and was closed in 1893. No passenger services were operated on the stretches of canal in Clydebank, but timber was floated across the river from Langbank in Renfrewshire to Bowling, and delivered to the Clydebank's industries by canal.
The Clydebank Shopping Centre was built astride the Forth and Clyde Canal and the depth of the water was reduced for the safety of shoppers and their children. British Waterways' Millennium Project saw the regeneration of the canal and it was re-opened to boats in May 2002. An innovative drop lock, the first in Europe, lowers boats beneath the fixed bridge at Dumbarton Road in Dalmuir.
Railways
In 1858 the North British Railway Co opened the Glasgow, Dumbarton & Helensburgh Railway to connect with a station on Kilbowie Road. The Glasgow, Yoker & Clydebank Railway was opened in 1882, primarily to serve the Clydebank Shipyard, and it was extended in 1897 to connect with the GD&H line at Dalmuir Station. In 1906 the NBR built a spur which served the Singer factory and the company named the station after the sewing machine company. The Lanarkshire & Dumbartonshire Railway opened in 1896 with a station near the Clydebank Shipyard, another to the south of the Singer factory and a third in Dalmuir. This line was closed as part of the "Beeching cuts" of 1964.
The two surviving railway lines serving Clydebank were electrified in the 1960s, when the famous "Blue Trains" were introduced. These lines remain open in 2004.
The Future
There have been many attempts since the Second World War to rationalise Clydebank's transport network. In 1949 the Inglis Report pointed to geographical features in the Burgh that would hinder transport improvement. The main obstacles (literally!) were identified as the canal bridge and the low railway bridge in Kilbowie Road. In 1969 a recommended road system for 1990 was published, suggesting that buses should provide feeder services to railway stations and that the Clydeside Expressway should be extended into Clydebank and up Kilbowie Road to meet the proposed Lomond Motorway. None of these recommendations was taken up. Strathclyde Passenger Transport has assisted in local transport surveys, however, and The Clydebank Plan 2003 - 2010, Clydebank re-built will focus on the Forth and Clyde canal and the riverside while a study by MVA, a private company, will be published in 2005.
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