Coming just before the announcement of the shortlist to bid for a fleet of replacement trams was the return of a long-term out of service tram. 2547 made its return to London Trams’ Therapia Lane Depot overnight on Saturday 6th/Sunday 7th September and will now undergo further attention to enable it to be returned to service.
2547 has probably been one of the most long-term (with a view to seeing it return to service) out of use trams on a modern UK tram network with it not having operated since 20th February 2019. It was previously reported that it required a replacement underframe and a quote for this work to take place was accepted from Alstom. The tram moved to Ilford for this work to take place and earlier this year was spotted by keen observers as being outside of the railway depot in the Essex town.
Whilst they have undertaken a lot of work on the tram it will still need further attention at Therapia Lane in order to bring it back into operating condition. This is likely to take some time so don’t quite expect it to be running if you happen to pop over to Croydon in the next few weeks!
When it does return to service it will bring the CR4000 fleet back up to 23 trams which will add extra capacity into the fleet and hopefully allow a full service to continue to run in the lead up to the new trams, due to enter service from the late 2020s.
2547 back home and sitting outside the workshops at Therapia Lane. (Photograph by David Brinkworth)
I wonder if any CR4000 will ever be saved and put into a museum. They are after all the second generation tram.
You would expect that one would go to Acton.
I’m not sure what you mean by saying that the CR4000 is ‘the’ second generation tram. If anything the Manchester T68 is the second generation tram being the first fleet to enter service on a second generation UK system.