Once again another weekend of enhanced heritage tram activity in Blackpool is almost here, with the Spring Bank Holiday weekend providing the perfect excuse for three days of the excellent ‘Gold’ service to be in operation. As with the May Day Bank Holiday weekend, each day will see an illuminated tram join the six timetabled cars to give a total of seven trams running daily, each of which will run one trip to Fleetwood.
With much of the UK basking in sweltering heat at present it is unfortunate that just one open car, Boat 600, is currently serviceable and that is expected to run on all three days of the extended weekend. However despite this, a good selection of trams are still expected to appear in service, including Rebuilt Balloon 718 which will be re-launched with a series of special evening trips on Friday 26th May, before it joins its more traditional looking sisters on heritage tours on the following three days.
The full planned heritage tram output for the weekend ahead is as follows.
Saturday 27th May
A – Balloon 715
B – Bolton 66
C – Rebuilt Balloon 718
D – Boat 600
E – Brush 631
F – Balloon 701
G – Frigate 736
Sunday 28th May
A – Balloon 723
B – Boat 600
C – Rebuilt Balloon 718
D – Fleetwood Box 40
E – Balloon 715
F – Brush 631
G – Western Train 733+734
Monday 29th May
A – Balloon 717
B – Railcoach 680
C – Rebuilt Balloon 718
D – Boat 600
E – Centenary 648
F – Balloon 701
G – Frigate 736
A mobile shop selling heritage tram souvenirs will be on board car 718 which is working on Duty ‘C’ on all three days. As ever, all advertised services and vehicles are subject to availability and may be changed due to unforseen circumstances.
British Trams Online will be present for this event and we should be providing ‘live’ coverage on our Facebook page across the weekend.
Another interesting weekend, my only possible criticism would be 718 is out too much and it would have been great to also have a purple one out with it to see the difference. Also why do the Vintage Trams fair so poorly? 66 and 40 are often dead certs on Blue Sundays but they don’t do a lot on Gold weekends – its all balloons.
I heard that 66 was doing private charters on both Sunday & Monday. That doesn’t explain Box 40’s absence on Bank Holiday Monday though, which has a very ‘modern’ feel to it – of the seven trams rostered, five have bus seats for example!
I think it’s cause of how busy the gold events are so they would require high capacity trams on gold events
What’s happened to the twin cars? No sign of either operational unit for months now.
That’s because there are no operational Twin car units! Presumably you aware that 272+T2 were involved in a fairly serious incident last September, whilst 675+685 have been temporarily withdrawn to receive some remedial attention to wiring. Sadly there are not enough workshop resources to tackle these as well as the other current projects such as Boat 227 (high priority as an obvious money spinner) and Brush 621 (being financed by a sponsor).
718 deserves to be out this weekend.!It looks so good now in the traditional colours.Also bare in mlnd that it will be used on the days when this sunny weather breaks down this weekend. It is certain to attract a lot of visitors, i’m sure!