"Oh look, it's the little tramway. I haven't been on it since I was a child. Let's go on it!"

The two women squealed with delight as they approached what looked like a woodland fairy grotto. Festooned with colourful lights, tree branches twinkled over the entrance. Suddenly there was the sound of a whistle blowing and a cry of "Hold tight please! The tram is about to leave!"

Welcome to Shipley Glen Tramway, the oldest working cable tramway in Britain. Since it opened 113 years ago, it has been used by generations of visitors and survived many closure threats.

It is run by a 20-strong team of volunteers who sell tickets, serve in the sweet shop, staff the museum, maintain the platforms and help with engineering work and repairs. There are six drivers.

I joined a volunteer shift on what turned out to be a poignant Saturday afternoon for the tramway. While I was there, the man affectionately known as Mr Saltaire' was laid to rest at the historic site.

A trustee of the tramway, Clive Woods was one of the driving forces in keeping it going. He was an active volunteer until his death last November.

As the T&A recently reported, some of Clive's family and friends arrived from as far as Surrey to scatter his ashes onto a pretty garden at the tramway.

"This place was a big part of his life," said his nephew, John Woods. "Let's hope his legacy carries on so it can be preserved for future generations."

Watching John scatter his uncle's ashes brought home to me how much the tramway means to the volunteers running it. "It's down to people like Clive that it's still going," said trustees chairman Richard Freeman.

The tramway was opened in May 1895 by Baildon entrepreneur Sam Wilson to bring visitors up the hill to Shipley Glen, where he'd installed fairground rides. Every year there's a Founder's Day in memory of Sam, when volunteers wear Victorian clothes. This year it's on Sunday, May 18.

Nearly a quarter-mile long, the tramway has a gauge of 20 inches along two tracks with a tram on each line. Strictly speaking, it's a funicular railway, but the style of cars leans more to a tramway.

It runs through a pretty woodland covered in a carpet of bluebells each spring, with the summit leading to Shipley Glen and the bottom to Saltaire.

In the early 1980s a right-of-way dispute halted operations but the tramway was averted from closure by the Bradford Trolley Bus Association with financial help from Bradford Council, and was run from 1994 to 2001 by Mick Leak. Today it's a charity, run entirely by volunteers.

"It's really Mick's legacy. He ensured its survival," said Richard. "We need volunteers to keep it going and ideally we'd like double the current amount. People give what time they can, working on a rota system."

I joined driver John Kennett, operating the cars from a hut overlooking the tramway. It was originally powered by a gas engine then oil, before being converted to electric in 1928. "The first gas supply came from Salts Mill. There was a 3in main up the middle of the tracks," said John.

As one tram goes down, the other passes it coming up. "They go at about 7.5mph," said John, who monitors the bottom station via a video screen.

"Drivers are taught to operate the tramway, and are trained in health and safety. I asked to become a driver last July and I only qualified two weeks ago. That shows how much training there is."

He operates a foot brake, a hand brake and an air brake, as well as a lever known as a dead man's handle'.

"If I take my hand off it, the tramway stops," he said. "This is a special place. Many people coming along remember it from their childhood and now they're bringing their children and grandchildren. We had visitors from Australia and a man from New Zealand who'd been here as a child - he paid £100 for his ride!"

It's not just visitors coming from far afield. One of the drivers is from Peterborough and another is from Rochdale!

"On a good summer's day we get about 1,500 visitors," said Richard. "On Easter Monday, 1915, there were said to be 17,000!"

In the little sweet shop I met volunteers Adam Hopkinson-Kitson, 16, and Sarah Collins, 17. The shelves are stacked with jars of traditional sweets, as well as ice cream, drinks and souvenirs. Customers, mainly young families, came and went.

I dished out a bag of sweets to a little boy tugging on his mother's sleeve. "Can we go on the tram now? Pleeeease!" he cried.

"People enjoy the sense of walking into the past," said Richard, a volunteer for four years. "They first came here as children and love the fact that it's still the same."

Trustee Vince Kitson organises special events. "Santa Specials are very popular," he said, leading me into a little hut on the platform. It was donated by Clayton Garage, one of the local businesses supporting the tramway.

At the entrance is a metal railing made from part of the old aerial glide at the former Shipley Glen fairground. Inside, the hut is decorated with Christmas trimmings.

"It's Santa's grotto, my daughter Zoe decorated it," said Vince. "Children come in to meet Santa before getting on the tram. We'd like an exhibition here on the tramway's present and future plans, like a working museum."

Vince and other volunteers have restored the platforms. Next to the grotto is a pretty covered seat under a Tram Stop sign, and further along is a Victorian-style lamp-post donated by someone who'd initially had it in his garden. Pots of daffodils are dotted about.

Taking a tram ride to the bottom, I chatted to Vince about the future of the site. "We want to make the whole experience, including the museum, interactive. The children visiting today are the volunteers of tomorrow," he said.

"We're looking for a curator to tell the story of the tramway and look after the museum. There's so much history here; did you know Suffragettes used to meet on top of the Glen? Emmeline Pankhurst gave a speech there to 70,000 people.

"We have visits by schools, railway clubs and community groups, and even wedding parties use the tramway. It's a very inclusive site. We're looking at ways of developing it and taking it into the future."

At the bottom station is a delightful Edwardian-style shop selling bric-a-brac. It's like walking into the past; the shelves are full of old tins, bottles, books, even old typewriters. A huge ornate till sits on the counter.

Round the corner is a museum, with a full-size replica of an original Shipley Glen tram outside. Among the fascinating items on display are old photographs of Shipley Glen and its tramway, including photographs of a bear and a lion at the Pleasure Grounds menagerie in the days when the site was known as Bradford's Golden Mile.' In one picture, Sam Wilson points proudly at his toboggan run in the Glen which closed in 1900.

There's an interactive feel; children can play on a model trollybus and see the original 1895 surge wheel pulling the trams down.

The visitors' book says it all: "Words cannot describe how brilliant this tram is" is scrawled in a child's handwriting. "I'm delighted to find it's still open 55 years after my first ride," is another comment.

Helping out on the tramway was a great way to spend an afternoon, and I discovered a great community spirit among the volunteers. Let's hope there's someone to blow that whistle and shout "Hold tight please!" for generations to come.

  • ,b> Shipley Glen Tramway is open Saturdays, Sundays and bank holidays, 12noon to 4.30pm. For information about becoming a volunteer, ring Councillor Dale Smith on 07801 669780 or visit glentramway.co.uk