Wingate Henry Bett

Wingate Henry Bett was born in Lincoln on 5 November 1911 and died in February 1977. He attended the Methodist Training College in Handsworth Wood in the 1930s and later lived in Handsworth and Erdington. He was the first president of the Transport Ticket Society and founder of the Electric Railways Society.

In the late 1930s he was writing a series of articles on British tramway systems and in August 1939 John Gillham took over the series in relation to Scottish systems. These articles were brought together in book form the following year as Great British Tramway Networks with Wingate H Bett and John C Gillham as co-authors. This became the bible of British tramways. It was comprehensive and very well researched and ran to four editions before adopting the format of regional handbooks.