Site of corner tram stop, Llandudno

Site of corner tram stop, Llandudno

Old photo of Palladium Corner with tramwayTrams connecting West Shore to Colwyn Bay swung around the corner of Gloddaeth Street and Mostyn Street, where you now see the roundabout. This was the busiest place on the tramway and was commonly known as Palladium Corner, after the nearby cinema. Tram timetables named it as Hooson’s Corner, after Hooson’s Café (at the junction’s north-west corner).

The old photos, courtesy of the L&CB Tramway Society, show the short section of double track where trams in each direction passed each other. There was only a single track along most of Mostyn Street and Gloddaeth Street. At this end of Gloddaeth Street there was a popular tram stop where crowds of summer holidaymakers boarded and alighted in the middle of the road.

Old photo of Palladium Corner with tramwaySometimes three or four trams would occupy the double-track section at the same time. Tram operations were complicated because the motormen (tram drivers) had limited visibility along Mostyn Street. Whenever the motorman of a departing tram belatedly saw an oncoming tram on the single track, he would have to reverse part way back around the corner!

The upper photo shows the tramway soon after it opened in 1907, with a tram departing for Colwyn Bay while another tram (bottom right corner) is at the stop.

The lower photo, taken decades later, shows a bus following an open “toast-rack” tram along Mostyn Street. Bus competition resulted in the tramway’s closure in 1956.

Both photos show how poles supported wires which stretched across the wide road junction, to hold electricity-supply wires above the tram tracks. Prominent on the far corner is the Carlton Buffet. The building next door was home to the FW Woolworth general store from the 1920s until 2008.

With thanks to the Llandudno & Colwyn Bay Tramway Society

Postcode: LL30 2SW    View Location Map

Footnotes: Recollections of the trams here

Evelyn Langdon (nee Cheetham) often boarded trams at Palladium Corner when living in Upper Mostyn Street. “When I worked at the GPO telephone exchange in Colwyn Bay, I used to go to work on the tram if the buses weren’t running in the winter. In summer they used to pack a lot of people into the long trams when they were busy. After I got married, we used to go to my in-laws in Penrhyn Bay on the tram. There was no space for our son’s pram on the buses, but on the trams we could put it behind the driver. That was on the double deckers – we couldn't go on the 'toast racks' with a pram. We had a Silver Cross pram and you could put the handle down.”

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