Christmas came early for the Lancastrian Transport Trust this year, when on December 23rd, the Trust were presented with an offer of lease for the Thornton Gate permanent way yard, adjacent to the Blackpool tramway. The LTT have long aspired to develop this site as a permanent home for its large collection of local buses and trams, and this has now taken a big step forward towards becoming a reality.
The Thornton Gate site is currently occupied by Bam Nuttall contractors, who are employed on the upgrading of the tramway and are expected to stay put until Easter 2012 when the system is due to re-open. The offer of lease identifies that this will prevent the LTT from developing its plans straight away, although this doesn’t mean that they will be resting on their laurels. Parkinsons of Blackpool, a local construction company, have generously offered to help the Trust to identify cost projections for their project, whilst
architects and a well-known tramway modeller are working hard to create visual aids to illustrate what the site could eventually look like.
The ultimate aim is to develop a transport heritage centre at Thornton Gate, which would become a permanent home for the LTT’s trams and buses, where they would be on display to the general public. The close proximity of the tramway to the site also creates the exciting possibility of the trams that reside there being able to operate on the main line, although this will obviously need an improved level of co-operation between the tramway operator and the vehicle owners.
Whilst this is very good news, the LTT have a lot of hurdles still to overcome; not least finding funds to pay for the construction of the proposed new building. Another concern is competition from the Friends of Fleetwood Trams, whose plans to create a similar visitor attraction using an existing building in nearby Fleetwood, are at a more advanced stage. It must also be hoped that there will be some flexibility in the Trust’s current arrangement to
store many of their trams at Rigby Road, as the creation of the new facility is expected to take around 12-18 months. Hopefully 2012 will see these challenges overcome and a positive long-term future secured for the second largest collection of historic trams in Britain.