Malta Railway: Valletta Viaduct

Malta Railway: Floriana Viaduct

The Malta Railway opened in 1883, and never made much money.  Its original metre-gauge line ran from the capital, Valletta, through Birkirkara to an inconvenient terminus, called Notabile, in a deep cutting outside the hill-town of Rabat.

The Malta Railway Company went bankrupt in 1890 and reopened two years later under the auspices of the Malta government which improved and in 1900 extended the line up to a station called Museum, nearer to the ancient capital city, Mdina.

In 1905 Malta Tramways Ltd opened its three routes from Valletta to Birkirkara, Zebbug and Vittoriosa, two of which directly competed with the railway.

Both the railway and the tramways were British exports.

The olive green steam locomotives for the railway were built by Manning Wardle of Leeds, Black Hawthorne & Co of Gateshead and Beyer Peacock of Manchester.

The trams expired in 1929 and the railway closed two years later, both defeated by the relentless competition of Malta’s self-employed bus drivers.

The Valletta railway terminus was located next to the Royal Opera House:  the tracks were underground and emerged on to a viaduct which crossed a ditch that formed part of the city fortifications and entered another tunnel.  It then crossed another viaduct alongside the Porte des Bombes in Floriana.

The tunnels apparently remain in good condition, and have occasionally been opened to the public:  https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20121022/local/Railway-tunnel-part-of-Malta-s-heritage.442073.

Both viaducts were originally timber, at the insistence of the military authorities who wanted to destroy them quickly if necessary in an emergency.  Eventually they were rebuilt in stone and still exist.  They’re easy to locate, thanks to a meticulously obsessive video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8OlMnpZvtQ.  It helps to know what you’re looking for.

Several of the country station buildings survive.  Hamrun is a scout headquarters;  Birkirkara is a childcare centre;  Museum station is a celebrated restaurant: [https://www.facebook.com/pg/stazzjonrestaurantrabat/photos/?tab=album&album_id=218770048333827].

Little else remains.  The only surviving piece of railway rolling stock is a third-class carriage which has stood in the open for years at Birkirkara:  https://web.archive.org/web/20170408171035/http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20170407/local/watch-maltas-last-surviving-train-carriage-chugs-toward-restoration.644585.

An intriguing hint that there may be more can be found in a news article about the reappearance of four reversible seats from one of Malta’s trams, suggesting that a tram body survives at St Thomas’ Bay:  https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20170628/local/century-old-malta-tram-benches-found.651902.

There are images of both the railway and the tramways at https://vassallohistory.wordpress.com/maltese-public-transport-since-1856-a-brief-history-of-the-public-transport-in-malta-the-omnibus-up-to-the-mid-1800s-the-only-means-of-human-transport-w.

It’s clear from an article in The Guardian that Valletta’s railway tunnels are only a tiny part of the fascinating underground beneath the city:  https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/feb/20/malta-secret-tunnels-inside-newly-discovered-underworld-valletta.

Nottingham Area Bus Society, Ruddington: Barton Transport 507 (JVO 230)

Because they’re essentially peripatetic, preserved buses present differently both to enthusiasts and to the general public.

While railed vehicles – trains and trams and, paradoxically, trackless trolleybuses – congregate where there is track on which they can run, buses can go wherever there’s tarmac, and so are most often seen at rallies, running heritage services, or on private hire for weddings and birthdays.

There are bus museums, such as the admirable London Bus Museum at Brooklands, but they’re few and far between, though South Yorkshire has two within a mile of each other.

The Nottingham Area Bus Society maintains an evocative collection based at the Great Central Railway (Nottingham) centre at Ruddington, south of the city of Nottingham:  http://www.nottinghamareabussociety.co.uk.

Here they restore and maintain a rich variety of vehicles that ran in the East Midlands in the post-war period – Nottingham Corporation, Midland General, South Notts, Felix and, perhaps best-loved of all, Barton.

Thomas Henry Barton bought his first charabanc in 1908, and built an extensive network of stage-carriage services and a thriving private-hire business, first based in Beeston, and from 1934 at Chilwell.

In the early years the company was largely staffed by some of Barton’s five sons and five daughters.

By the late 1930s they were advertising ‘Road Cruises’ to Belgium, Germany and France.

T H Barton was an engineer, and his vehicles were distinctive.  He favoured Leyland chassis and Duple bodies, and had an eye for a second-hand bargain bus.  He never ever referred to “diesel” – only “oil” – engines.

He was also a great character.  At his funeral in 1946 his peaked bus-driver’s hat rested on his coffin, and he was carried to his grave on a brand-new bus chassis.

In the decades after Tom Barton’s death his company’s buses remained both modern and distinctive, in an elaborate red, cream and maroon livery with generous amounts of trim.

The Nottingham Area Bus Society looks after five of Barton’s fleet, dating between 1947 and 1976, keeping alive the moving street furniture that made the locality distinctive.

And the Barton name lives on through trentbarton, the local bus operator that took over the Barton fleet in 1989.

The 60-page, A4 handbook for the 2018 ‘Waterways and Railways of the East Midlands’ tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list features the Great Central Railway (Nottingham) and is available for purchase, price £15.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.