We go a bit more up-to-date than of recent with our Picture in Time feature today as we take a look at Blackpool Balloon 715 back in 2008.
As most readers of this website will be aware 715 returned to service in Blackpool last weekend as part of the heritage fleet looking resplendent in a coat of Green and Cream in the 1990s livery style (if you don’t you must have been living under a rock for the past week!) but back in 2008 the tram carried a very different fleet livery; the Metro Coastlines Line 16 Light Blue and Yellow livery. During the early part of this century a number of Blackpool trams (probably most famously the Twin Cars) received repaints into one of the versions of Metro Coastlines livery (each of the bus routes in the resort had a colour but the tramway was never as lucky as to get its own line colour so the various line colours were used on the trams) and 715 received its repaint in 2008. This livery replaced a plain white livery which was the remnants of an all over advert for the Mystique show. The Metro Coastlines livery would remain in situ until 2011 when for the first time in 6 years the tram would received Green and Cream again – this time in the 1970s style.
We catch up with 715 firstly on 5th September 2008 when it was caught at Tower whilst running on a service to Cleveleys and then we find the tram sitting on Hopton Road outside the depot the following day.
(Both Photographs by Gareth Prior)