Dublin’s original tram system (1872–1959) was a rattling work of art and efficiency, albeit an occasionally fatal one. The first horse-drawn trams began service in 1872 between College Green and Rathgar. They were doubledeckers, two and a half tons of painted oak and iron pulled by pairs of horses swapped out every few miles to prevent exhaustion (I hate animals being used for this purpose). Steel rails embedded in cobblestones made for a smoother ride than the jolting “omnibuses” that came before where, incidentally, we get the word “bus.” Conductors in grimy uniforms called out “Car, sir? Car, madam?” as they clanged through the damp air of Grafton Street. A penny fare could take a labourer to work or a courting couple to Dollymount Strand. Women on the open top deck had modesty boards installed to preserve Victorian decency, a detail that says as much about the age’s moral temperature as it does about how women have always had to put up with perverted nonsense. The great leap came with electrification in 1901 under William Martin Murphy, founder of the Dublin United Tramways Company (DUTC). Dublin was among the first cities in the world to electrify its entire system, a source of civic pride. Sleek, humming machines replaced horses, drawing current from overhead wires. Capable of 40 miles an hour and fitted with air brakes, many were built locally at Spa Road Works, Inchicore. At its peak, the network spanned over 60 miles, reaching Dalkey, Terenure, and Clontarf. Trams carried families to the coast, workers to the docks, and clerks from Rathmines and Phibsborough to Dame Street. Each tram bore a front symbol. A star, triangle, or heart, to help illiterate passengers find their route. The doubledeckers became microcosms of class. Upstairs, middle-class commuters smoked pipes and read the Freeman’s Journal, downstairs, the air was thick with talk and sweat. That feel of slipping between worlds, the muffled rattle of the city outside, the metallic scent of ozone from wires fizzing in the rain, the steady ding of the motorman’s bell, was magical. You might climb to the open deck for a sea breeze nearing Clontarf, but more often huddled below on a rainy morning, pressed between the Guinness breath of aul lads and shawled motts with market baskets and cheap lavendar perfume. Crime was rare, mostly pickpockets and kids. Accidents, sadly, were common. Carefree children darting into tracks or elderly passengers slipping while boarding. Yet for all its dangers, the tram revolutionised Dublin life, expanding the horizons of the working class. Motormen and conductors worked punishingly long shifts in all weather. Their meals had to be brought to them by family at the terminus. Their employer, William Martin Murphy, was both visionary and villain. The man who electrified the trams and later led employers during the 1913 Lockout. The decline came when motor buses arrived in the 1920s. They were flexible, cheap, unbound by rails. The DUTC replaced its trams and rebranded as the Dublin United Transport Company in 1941. One by one, the lines were torn up and sold for scrap. By July 1949 the last city tram had clanged its bell for the final time. A solitary echo lingered on the Hill of Howth Tramway until May 31, 1959. After that Dublin was a tramless city, its great arteries of steel torned up or buried beneath tarmac till the Luas decades later.