Happy New Year! What will 2022 bring us? The way the last couple of years have been we think its very unwise to predict that one! We start off the year with another edition of “15 Years Apart” and we go all illuminated!
The only illuminated feature car to run regularly in both 2006 and 2021 was the Illuminated Frigate, HMS Blackpool. In this first photo we see the tram just departing from North Pier at a time when this was where all Illumination Tours commenced their journeys from. With its original post-refurbishment light configuration and pre any Royal Navy adverts the tram will head up to Little Bispham, round the loop and then back down to Pleasure Beach before eventually getting back to North Pier and journeys end. This was 3rd September 2006.
We then find the Frigate on 25th September 2021 as it comes round Little Bispham loop with another Illumination Tour which now starts from Pleasure Beach heads up here and then returns to Pleasure Beach to terminate. The lights are now in a revised format with the same colour together, the helicopter has changed colour, the Royal Navy are the sponsors and plain old 736 now carried F736 as its external number.
Both Photographs by Gareth Prior