Over the weekend of Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th September the Blackpool Tramway celebrated its 130th anniversary in style with the most ambitious period of heritage tram operation since the upgraded tramway had opened in 2012. An intensive heritage service ran on both days with 12 trams running on the Saturday and 13 on the Sunday (plus the use of Modified Balloons on a depot shuttle service) with the highlights being the return to service of Blackpool Twin Car 675+685 in a gleaming coat of green and cream paint with Balloon 723 also resurrected for the weekend in a less than gleaming condition but a welcome sight nonetheless! In addition to the tram service there were behind the scenes tours of Rigby Road and Starr Gate Depot with line-ups of withdrawn trams at the former (different displays each day). This slightly revised look gallery starts off on Thursday 24th September with some views of trams in both normal service and on Illumination Tour duty before we move on to more of the same on Friday 25th September. Its then onto the main weekend with photos on the mainline of the heritage and normal service, at the depots and the photo line-ups. We end with a few more shots taken on Monday 28th September with some images of the Flexity2s in action plus Modified Balloon 700 on driver training.
All Photographs in this collection were taken by Gareth Prior
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