Back in the early 1930s, Glasgow Subway was running at a loss and calls were being made for the system, which was still cable-hauled and had yet to be electrified, to be abandoned.
In 1931, with the annual deficit of the system reaching £30,000 - roughly £2 million in today’s money - meetings were held to decide its future.
During one meeting, the Glasgow Transport Committee said that deficits had risen to more than £150,000 (£10m) since the subway was acquired by the Glasgow Corporation in 1923.
It was argued that the only way forward would either be to adopt a scheme where the cost of the subway, which required significant investment to be electrified, was made chargeable on public rates or scrap it altogether.
River boats over subway trains?
The future, said the city’s transport convener, Councillor P J Dollan, would be for Glasgow to focus on trams and buses - and even utilise the Clyde for motor boat transport. It was felt that a river boat service from Rutherglen to Yoker, with intervening stations, would be far more economically viable than developing the city’s underground railway.
Cllr Dollan agreed the Glasgow Subway “ought to be scrapped as soon as possible”, and that the Corporation should instead turn its attention to constructing a bridge linking Govan and Partick. Maintenance of such a crossing, it was said, would be much cheaper than continuing to handle the debt accrued by the subway.
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Fortunately, there were plenty of councillors who did not agree with Councillor Dollan’s negative outlook on the viability of the subway system.
Saving the subway
In April 1933, Glasgow Corporation voted 58 to eight in favour of the electrification of the entire subway system. New city transport convener Councillor Bailie McSkimming stated that even if the subway was indeed eventually abandoned, the city had a duty of responsibility to modernise the outdated cable system.
Electrification of the subway cost just shy of £100,000 (£6 million) and was projected to result in an annual saving of £28,000 (£2 million).
The last of the Glasgow Subway’s cable cars rumbled underneath the city for the final time in December 1935 and the system was temporarily closed to ready it for electrification.
Fittingly, the last cable carriage was driven to the sheds by the son of the man who drove the subway’s very first car.
Newspapers reported that Glasgow Subway driver Robert Boyd’s 80-year-old father could still vividly recall the thrill of taking the first train on its journey under the city four decades earlier.
