A trip to Birmingham City Centre for today’s “Lockdown Walks”.
While there had been adverts from the early days of Midland Metro on the T69 trams these had never materialised into anything more than above window adverts but that was to change from 2019 when following the move to becoming West Midlands Metro the first significant advertising liveries were carried. There’s no doubt that what we have come to know as advertising liveries on the system are in no way all over adverts with just full height ads carried on the centre section with the remainder of the tram just seeing above window height adverts. Nevertheless, it was February 2019 when the first commercial advertising contract was let which saw Just Eat take out adverts on two trams – 18 and 21. These survived around two years – including the move from the hybrid livery to the full blue livery – before they were both removed in February/March 2021 leaving the standard fleet livery for the first time.
In this view we see 18 minus adverts on Broad Street, Birmingham awaiting access to the platforms at the Library terminus. (Photograph by Roland Bull, 26th February 2021)