A view of electric tram no. 38, proceeding along the tree-lined Norton High Street.c1900A colour postcard showing electric tram No. 38 proceeding along the tree-lined Norton High Street.c1900 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
The column that the boy in this picture is leaning against is one of the supports for the overhead tram power cables. The base of one of these columns (up to the boys shoulder height) still exists and has been left as a monument to the tram system. The plinth is regularly painted and maintained and still bears the Imperial Tramways crest and is dated 1897. See photo elsewhere on this site.
This photograph shows how much yet so little has changed over the years. The houses either side of the road you would recognise from the picture, the trees have fences round them but must be the same trees I walked under to Norton Board School every day for 5 years all that time ago. Where the lines turn into what was the old tramshed now a retirement home stayed for many years after they took the lines up along the main road. I remember walking along those houses picking up whicker baskets of washing on my hand cart and taking them up to a washer woman in Cook Terrace off Station Road bringing back the baskets of clean washing, Dad was supposed to do it with his truck but gave me a very lucrative source of pocket money. The houses have been modernised inside, there are changes to the large gardens they once had although the facades are the same, no one ripped them down in the name of progress thank goodness. I looked at the picture and saw us kids walking down to school Dents, Dietz, Downs, Bulmers, Robinsons, Watsons, Sheridens, Guards, Pigs, Pollards, Nixons and the lot from Calffallow Lane – Masons, Davidson, Kennedys, Crawfords – so many and such good memories of those times. I still go home from Town at times along Norton Road, the High Street and Green, then the ring road to Darlington Lane or Junction Road Harrowgate lane, adding to global warming? well no more than a windfarm footprint as any engineer will know.