The recent week-long 1940s event at Crich Tramway Village featured a special appearance by an unusual visitor: a Spitfire aircraft, which was prominently displayed at Town End for the whole week. Co-incidentally while this event was in full swing, another Spitfire could also be seen alongside the tram tracks on Blackpool promenade, with the plane on static display close to the Tower over the weekend of 8th & 9th August for the annual summer air show.
Traditionally the August 1940s weekend is one of the busiest events of the year at Crich, and so for 2015 it was expanded to last for seven days, although most key activities were still focussed on the weekend. The Spitfire was the latest in a series of vehicles other than trams to appear prominently at special events this season, following on from the recent visits of a preserved London trolleybus from Sandtoft and the ‘Battle Bus’ from the London Transport Museum collection. This joined the usual attractions such as re-enactors in period costume, live music and other visiting vehicles from the era. Some criticism has been seen relating to the weekdays which some visitors found rather disappointing, however most feedback on the event – and the weekend in particular – have been positive as usual.
Meanwhile in Blackpool, and some glorious sunny weather (anyone would think it was summer!) combined with increased visitor numbers ahead of the air show provided a very welcome boost to loadings on the heritage tram tours, with two Boat cars in use on Saturday 8th August. The following day, and the air show itself saw Bolton 66 and ‘Princess Alice’ 706 in action, but unfortunately the tramway struggled to cope with the masses of people viewing the display during the afternoon. As a result of the large volume of people spilling onto the tramway after the show had ended, there were severe delays to the tram service and this resulted in many people having a very long wait to catch a tram. Despite the air show always being a big draw for visitors, no extra trams were rostered on this date with all of the ‘B Fleet’ being confined to the depot, despite extra drivers having recently been trained on these trams. Instead it was left to the infamous rival promenade bus service to clean up the crowds, although even at that it was a long time before normal service was fully restored. Further complications arose due to traffic jams, with Lytham Road being gridlocked which delayed the heritage cars’ return to Rigby Road depot. Hopefully, lessons have been learned and every effort will be made to increase the tram output for next year’s event – perhaps with a more intensive heritage service, which could certainly help to shift the crowds?
Some of the problems totally out of the operators hands. Roads gridlocked means buses don’t get though. Same with tramway really need a way of controlling people using tramway as massive path. Quite clear huge numbers were on the tarmac track sections
Been clear its been a very busy season already. Think Council / Event Organisers in conjunction with Blackpool Transport need to put things in place for next year. Airshow growing exponentially and demands on public transport massive. Barriers seems to be something worth considering for “big” outdoor events. As way of simply keeping people off tracks. Getting boots on the ground offering up to date transport advice & trying to keep order on core platforms another potential route as well. As your article alluded to B Fleet should play a role in the mix. Certainly its only part of the solution though.
Regarding Crich quite clear some very angry people clearly needs to be looked at. Not only that the management responses left the problems far from healed. People who visited for over 20 years were clearly far from happy. Think they have to be more careful with the event details and event build up coverage. Case of expectation management. A lack of differentiation between what was a very popular and very received event and the build up days which were “enhanced” but not necessarily in line with some visitors expectations. If those who felt “conned” “robbed” “disgusted” who have supported place for significant number of years don’t come back and worse tell their friends and the world has corrosive effect on museum.
This is very emotive language indeed and indicative of a highly selective presentation of the facts. More than 8,000 visitors passed through the Crich admissions process during the seven day event. The management team at Crich review the more important, and relevant, social media sites plus our own sources of feedback on a daily basis and are aware of only four individuals (0.05% of all visitors) who might fall into the category you describe, although they may each have expressed their opinions on more than one medium. You are not in a position to know what the management response was to these individuals as it is not appropriate to use social media to answer individual complaints.
Feedback from a wide range of sources indicates that the visitors with positive comments far outweighed those with negative comments. I was at Crich for most of the days concerned and took the opportunity to seek the opinions of several visitors and, almost without exception, they had thoroughly enjoyed their day out. Some commented how much they preferred the weekday environment which had less military content, and was more relaxed, than the weekend.
A few positive quotes from the week: “A thoroughly enjoyable day out”, “Fantastic day”, Very enjoyable day out. Thank You ”, “A marvellous day thoroughly enjoyed by me and my Grandsons”. Many have told their friends!
Whilst the event did manage to appeal to people with a wide range of interests it is accepted that the differential between the weekday and the weekend offer could have been highlighted better. That lesson has been learned for future years.