THE Evening Times writer Jack House remembered watching the final tram on Edinburgh’s Princes Street being stopped by a huge crowd. When Glasgow’s trams staged their own farewell on September 4, 1962, he wanted to be there, too. But at Bridgeton Cross, one woman asked him, “Whaur’s the baun’?’”. “And I must say that I missed a band, too,” he wrote. A bystander in green bunnet and blue muffler lamented that there weren’t enough “auld yins” - vintage trams. A ‘caur’ full of councillors “wearing the fatuous smile that are proper for such occasions” went by. Jack walked into town, following the long procession. “Half Glasgow seemed to be lining the streets,” he recorded. “I saw tears in many eyes. The heavens were weeping in sympathy.” In Union Street, people of all ages dashed out to lay pennies onto the tracks so that they would have a flattened souvenir of the day. Dads held their kids up for a last look at the trams. An elderly woman grabbed Jack by the arm and told him: “Glasgow will never be the same.”
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