Nottingham is one of seven UK towns and cities with its own tram network, and until this week was the only one I hadn't travelled on. It's called Nottingham Express Transit, or NET for short, and it'll be 20 years old next year.
The first section opened on 9th March 2004 with its southern terminus at Nottingham station. It wove through the city centre and out to the northern suburbs, with one branch following the existing railway to Hucknall and another shorter spur bearing off to Phoenix Park. Phase 2 opened in 2015 and consisted of two distinct southern branches, one to Toton Lane via Beeston and the other across the Trent to Clifton South. [geographic map]
Trams currently operate either Toton Lane ←→ Hucknall or Clifton South ←→ Phoenix Park. The first of these is officially line 1 or the Green line, and the second is line 2 or Purple, but these designations aren't in everyday use and instead everything's described by the terminus at the end of the line.
Two different types of tram are used, one set the originals and the other set bought in to service the 2015 extension. They also have locally sourced names, so you might find yourself aboard Robin Hood or Brian Clough, or the less obvious Sir Martyn Poliakoff or Vicky McClure, or even Torvill and Dean.
A single fare is £3, which currently compares poorly to the £2 bus cap in operation across the city. Alternatively you can buy an all day ticket for £5, or a combined bus and tram 'Robin Hood' ticket for £6, which when you're intending to ride the entire 20 mile network is an absolute bargain. But I got short shrift from the counter staff in the Nottingham Tourism and Travel Centre and the separate Nottingham City Transport Travel Centre, both of whom despatched me to buy a ticket from a tram stop instead, then went back to waiting in case an actual customer turned up.
As an outsider to the system, the most mysterious practical absence is a timetable. Absolutely nothing displayed at tram stops tells you how long it might take to get anywhere, only when the next tram will turn up. I did pick up a supposed timetable at the station but that was just a map, a list of frequencies and six laborious pages of first and last services. I did eventually find a proper timetable linked from the NET website, but dated May 2016 which may or may not be current, and it turns out nowhere's more than half an hour from the station with Hucknall and Toton the longest haul.
And then I went and travelled the entire network.
Nottingham Station to Phoenix Park(north, 25 mins)
The elevated tram stop at the mainline station changed from terminus to two facing platforms when the southern extensions opened in 2015. A chunky concrete viaduct crosses the railway and the canal, much of which the general public can walk underneath via a modern quarter which looks like a skatepark (and at one point is). On the far side, at the edge of the Lace Market, the connection to the road network is emblazoned with warning signs screaming 'Trams only' because one misplaced car could bring the entire network to a halt. Then begins the slow-but-busy city centre section... round the Old Market Square, past the main shops and out via Nottingham Trent University for maximum student footfall.
The steepest part of the network is between the Arboretum and The Forest, with southbound trams reduced to a snail's pace on the ascent. The Forest isn't proper Sherwood, more an enormous recreation ground, but it is where the infamous Goose Fair is now held every October. Beyond here the line splits briefly to follow contraflow lanes through Hyson Green. On the northbound it's "oh, this is a bit of a dump" whereas on the southbound it's "ah, this is where the shops are, this is nicer". The tracks rejoin outside NET's main depot and then align with a proper railway, the Robin Hood line, to follow the valley of the River Leen. I'm totally rushing this description btw - if mine was a proper Nottingham blog I could have got weeks of posts out of this.
The Phoenix Park spur bears off at Highbury Lane amid bogstandard provincial suburbia. Trams follow the route of the single track Cinderhill Colliery Railway which leads to the site of Nottinghamshire's first coal mine, which has long since been transformed into a business park and a park and ride. NET is big on park and rides, indeed each of the four termini has one, offering free parking in return for not driving into the city centre. I idled away my wait between trams by climbing a woody trail into Phoenix Park, which is exactly the name you'd give a landscaped spoil heap, indeed the clue had been in the name Cinderhill all along. Otherwise, unless you fancy seeing a Premier Inn and some out-of-town warehouses, you can give the entire Phoenix Park branch a miss.
Nottingham Station to Hucknall(north, 30 mins)
The first four miles are identical to the first two preceding paragraphs. The last four miles run alongside the railway, monopolising one of the tracks, and pass by quite speedily. Unless you're commuting or park-and-riding all the interest is in the town at the end of the line, which is Hucknall. It's a proper little market town, or ex-market town now money's too tight to mention, but whose high street continues to be holding back the years. It also kicks well above its weight in sharing its history with visitors, so my thanks to the Hucknall Tourist and Regeneration Group who staff a corner at the back of the library brimming over with information, leaflets and heritage trails. Stars.
I learnt that the library stands on the site of the town stocks. I learnt that the statue of a miner by the station car park stands astride a giant Davy lamp, making this the tallest statue in Nottinghamshire. I learnt that the Red Lion pub has been here over 250 years. I learnt that the turrety Coffee Tavern was opened as a Victorian Temperance House. I learnt that the Byron cinema opened in 1936 with a Shirley Temple film. I learnt where composer Eric Coates grew up, although I didn't have time to pop down Duke Street and see his house. But most of all I learnt about a local poet who's the area's most famous son and is buried in the family vault at St Mary Magdalene.
That'd be Lord Byron who inherited nearby Newstead Abbey at the tender age of ten. He'd have known Hucknall well, and may have supped in the Red Lion when collecting his tenants' rents. But he spent much of his teenage years at Harrow or Cambridge, then settled in London being romantically licentious, and died tragically young in Greece after eight years in self-imposed exile. Westminster Abbey wouldn't touch him due to "questionable morality" so he ended up not in Poets Corner but in Hucknall, joined later by his daughter Ada Lovelace. The interior of St Mary Magdalene is worth seeing for much more than just Byron's grave - I have two fullcolour leaflets to prove it - but alas opens to visitors for just two hours a day five days a week and I narrowly missed. Time your Byron pilgrimage carefully.
Nottingham Station to Clifton South(south, 20 mins)
Heading south from the station the tram rapidly meets residential streets and soon makes its only crossing of the Trent. This is at Wilford Toll Bridge, built in the 1860s to replace an unreliable ferry, and now otherwise de-vehicled. The tollhouse at the northern end of the bridge displays an original list of charges - then applied per animal - and these days doubles up as an unusual tiny lunchtimes-only cafe.
The tram then speeds south along another disused railway before bearing off to serve the reassuringly mundane suburb of Clifton. The local newsagent is called the Maid Marian Convenience Store and displays an old Evening Post logo, which is a dead giveaway that you're still in Nottingham. Were this London the line would stop here but because it's the East Midlands it continues to the very edge of the city district where it terminates amid another massive sprawling park and ride. Unless you want a symmetrical photo of waiting trams or a distant glimpse of actual countryside on the Notts/Leics borders you can give this branch a miss, indeed I'd say the entire Phoenix Park to Clifton South line is redundant for gadabout daytrippers.
Nottingham Station to Toton Lane(southwest, 30 mins)
This is the twistiest branch and possibly the most varied, though not initially in an attractive way. Nottingham's trading and industrial estates have to go somewhere and here are several, jammed into the gaps between canals, railway lines, arterial roads and a minor river. One large building has an unusual sign on the front saying Warhammer World, because it turns out this is the manufacturing HQ of Games Workshop where all the unpainted orcs come from. Another new bridge leaps across the A52 and then comes the pretty bit which is the lakeside campus of the University of Nottingham. This is a recreational draw even for non-students and also the site of an Arts Centre (but I missed the entrance), a Museum of Archaeology (but closed Monday-Wednesday) and the Djanogly Gallery (but which I assumed was just a cafe).
The next suburb is Beeston, a significant settlement with a modern end where the tram stops and a pedestrianised high street where it doesn't. The parish church was up-Gothic-ed by George Gilbert Scott, the Blue Plaque Heritage Trail encourages you to visit Richard Beckinsale's primary school and the town square requires a mural on a junction box to remind residents how nice it used to look. The headquarters of Boots the Chemist is technically in Beeston but is located closer to the University stop and you won't see much from outside anyway. As the tram continues into Chilwell the surrounding housing estates get luckier, their peripheral avenues undeserving of the frequency of service they've been gifted. Then it's one last push across scrappy fields to "Toton Lane, which is the last stop", i.e. yet another park and ride.
When the extension was planned it was intended that Toton would be the site of HS2's East Midlands Hub, converting a rail depot into the sole stop on the branch to Leeds. Passengers for Derby or Nottingham would change here for onward connections, which in Nottingham's case meant a conveniently sited tram. One more stop after Toton Lane would have been sufficient. But in November2021 the government announced that HS2 would terminate at East Midlands Parkway instead, allowing fast trains to proceed direct to the two city centres, and overnight all of the proposed investment at Toton was no longer needed. Instead the tram terminates adrift from housing and commercial opportunities surrounded by 972 parking spaces, though close to a Japanese-themed aquatics centre and canine hydrotherapy pool if that's your thing.
Many of the high speed benefits of a hyperfast London-Toton link would have been negated by the need to change to the tram and dawdle into Nottingham, so perhaps Leeds' loss is the East Midlands gain. But it turns out that big national infrastructure decisions have significant local repercussions that long reverberate, as here at the tip of the Green line where nothing much is happening and the car remains king.
