Beamish pull out all the stops for Great North Steam Fair

The second installment of Beamish Museum’s Great North Festival of Transport, the 2013 Great North Steam Fair event, has been taking place at the museum between Thursday 11th and Sunday 14th April. As usual, this event has featured a whole host of steam engines and many other historic vehicles being demonstrated around the whole site, including vintage cars, buses, traction engines, steam rollers, fire engines, and of course plenty of trams! Both members of the British Trams Online team were in attendance on Saturday 13th April, which turned out to be a pretty remarkable day.

For tram enthusiasts such as ourselves, the highlight was naturally the appearance of the two visiting tramcars – Lisbon 730 and Glasgow 1068 – which were kept busy throughout the day. However, an impressive total of six different trams ran in passenger service on this day, with Newcastle 114 (still decorated from the tramway’s 40th anniversary celebrations of the previous week) and Oporto 196 also in use all day. Blackpool ‘Boat’ 233 alos made a brief appearance in the morning, and finally Grimsby & Immingham 26 was drafted into action towards the end of the afternoon to assist with clearing the large queues of visitors seeking transportation back to their cars. With Sunderland 101 posed on the depot track fan throughout the day, the only operational tram that did not appear outside was Blackpool 31. It was particularly pleasing to see the Lisbon car being driven by a Merseyside Tramway Preservation Society Committee member, once again highlighting the great relationship that exists between these organisation. Unlike last week, all trams travelled in the same direction but this ensured that there was nearly always a tram in sight and a very frequent service was provided.

Other highlights included two early steam locomotives which had been borrowed specifically for this event, Rocket and Planet, both hauling passenger trains and a whole host of other vehicles running. At times the Town area became quite congested creating a real taste of rush hour traffic from days gone by. The museum was also packed with visitors with some staff and volunteers commenting that they couldn’t remember ever seeing the site so busy. This resulted in some enormous queues for trams in the Town, particularly as the day drew to a close, but the crews coped admirably under such pressures.

This fantastic day concluded with a special evening photographic event, which saw both Lisbon 730 and Glasgow 1068 posed in the Town after dark with other period street traffic, including a horse-drawn fire engine. After a shaky start, the Great North Festival of Transport is shaping up to be one of Beamish Museum’s biggest successes yet – and don’t forget, it isn’t over yet! Next week the focus switches to the North East’s rich mining heritage for an event titled ‘Old King Coal’ which runs from Thursday 18th to Sunday 21st April inclusive. Subject to availability, both visiting trams should be running on all four days, so if you haven’t been to see them yet, do so if you can. This is likely to be the last opportunity to ride on both cars at Beamish before they return to their respective homes and will hopefully be just as succesful as the first two weekends have been.

The beautifully decorated Newcastle 114 loading up at Foulbridge, with Lisbon 730 from Birkenhead waiting for it to depart behind. (Photo by Andrew Waddington)

Glasgow 1068 dominates a busy scene at the Town in glorious sunshine as passengers board outside Barclay's Bank. (Photo by Andrew Waddington)