During the history of Britain's electric tramcar fleets, many thousands were manufactured of which the vast majority saw out their operational life with a single owner. However, for several hundred there was to be a second - if not, in certain cases, a third - career with a new operator.brbrAlmost from the dawn of the electric era in the late 19th century tramcars were loaned or bought and sold between operators. The reasons for this were multifarious. Sometimes the aspirations of the original owners for traffic proved wildly optimistic and the fleet was downsized to reflect better the actual passenger levels. War was a further cause as operators sought to strengthen their fleets to cater for unexpectedly high level of demand or to replace trams destroyed by enemy action. For other operators, modernization represented an opportunity to sell older cars while, certainly from the 1930s, a number of operators - such as Aberdeen, Leeds and Sunderland - took advantage of the demise of tramwa