The Heaton Park Tramway – the UK’s only truly preserved tramway – have announced their operating statistics for 2015 which saw 5,7000 passengers carried on the half mile running line from the Middleton Road gates to Lakeside.
These 5,700 passengers equated to 12,000 passenger journeys (once multi ride tickets and reciprocal agreements are taken into account). Trams travelled for over 800 miles with 6,000 passenger miles recorded by five different trams operating at some point in the year. These trams were, of course, Blackpool 619, Blackpool 623, Manchester 765, Hull 96 and Blackpool 680 with 619 the hardest working of all with 680 at the other end of the scale having only seen limited use in between its loans at Beamish and Blackpool. And the service was operated by a team of 40 volunteers.