Public Transport

Turnpike abolition brought horse-omnibus services to Saltley and N. Green in the later 1870's. These were replaced by open-topped horse-drawn tramcars of the Birmingham Central Tramways Company on Council-built lines in '84. Other routes were soon being served by steam-cars, the Great Lister Street to Saltley line having them a year later. N. might have been first to have electric trams but for local opposition to overhead cables : in the event it was last, keeping its horses until 1906. There was a tramcar depot off Long Acre thereafter. Meanwhile steam trams had been chuffing their unloved way along Prospect and Ashted Rows and Great Francis Street to join the earlier route along Vauxhall Road and Bloomsbury Street (both widened in the '80's) and Saltley Road. After electrification the line through N. was a loop via N. Park Road and Long Acre.

In 1922 the City's first trolley-buses were introduced on the N. route, where trams had been causing the greatest obstruction to other traffic. Six years later the Inner Circle 'bus route' was instituted via Saltley Road, N. Place, and Rocky Lane. In the '50's both trams and trolley-buses gave way to diesel buses.