Tuesday 7th February 2012 was a notable day for the Blackpool tramway as for the first time this year, a tram carried passengers along the promenade! As if that wasn’t interesting enough, the tram in question was carrying a Royal passenger, in what was believed to have been only the fifth Royal tram ride in the entire history of the system.
The reason for this special visit was to celebrate the opening of the new wedding chapel on the promenade near North Pier, and HRH Prince Edward was invited to formally open the new function venue. Flexity2 car 001 was chosen for this special duty, marking the second time this particular tram had been used to convey dignitaries; the first being its own launch ceremony last September. The Prince boarded 001 at Pleasure Beach at around 1:00pm for the trip to Tower, where he alighted to inspect the new ‘Comedy Carpet’ unveiled opposite the Tower itself last year. The Prince and the other guests then continued on foot to the chapel, and once the opening ceremony was over, they then returned south aboard 001 which then ran back to Starr Gate depot empty. Despite the significance of the occasion, not many people seemed to be around to witness it and passers-by would probably not have realised that 001 was doing such a special journey – indeed ‘L’ boards were visible in its windscreen suggesting that this was nothing more exciting than another stint of driver training!
For the record, the other Blackpool trams to have carried members of the Royal family
are as follows: the now-scrapped illuminated Lifeboat carried the Duchess of York in 1937; HRH Princess Alice rode on both Standard 40 and Centenary 641 in 1985 (but surprisingly didn’t ride on car 706 despite naming it after her!); and more recently Boat 600 carried the Duchess of Cornwall in 2008, and was also named after her although no actual naming ceremony took place. 001 therefore joins the ranks of trams with Royal
connections – hopefully the start of a promising career for the next generation of Blackpool trams.
Our thanks go to Andrew Blood of ‘Trams Today’ for supplying the information and
accompanying photograph for this article.