Another day and another letter in our “A-Z”.
The letter V is for vinyls and at a conservative estimate we probably type the word vinyls about 500 times in any given year! The days of hand painted adverts are long gone and any advert you probably see on a tram nowadays has been applied by the sticking on of vinyls. Practically every modern tram system has had at least one full vinyl wrap in recent years with valuable income coming in from the companies wanting to take out the advertising contract. Of systems across the UK, Edinburgh has well and truly embraced the idea of advertising on the trams (although not all final vinyl wraps it is a rare occasion indeed when there is plain fleet livery there) and in Manchester it is also a regular occurrence to see a new all over advert applied.
There have been many advertising vinyls seen on Manchester Metrolink’s M5000s and one such design was seen on 3030 between June 2018 and February 2019. This is pretty much the standard advert type you see on Metrolink with the ends of the tram remaining in full fleet livery and the rest of the tram fully wrapped, including the windows. This was the tram having not long left Piccadilly with a service to Bury. (Photograph by Gareth Prior, 10th September 2018)