The annual Heritage Railway Awards took place at a ceremony in Newcastle on the night of Saturday 8th February and it was a night of celebration for the Crich Tramway Village as London County Council 1 won the Diesel and Electric Locomotion category.
The high-profile restoration of LCC 1 – commonly known as “Bluebird” – took 10 years and £500,000 worth of funding with the end result stunning and a tram which turns heads at the home of the National Tramway Museum.
It was officially launched back into service at a special event on Friday 13th September 2024 where many of those who made it possible were able to see the tram running for the first since it was withdrawn from service in Leeds during 1957. “Bluebird” then subsequently ran over both days of the following Electric Tram Weekend and once again provided to be popular with visitors to the event.
Speaking about the restoration of “Bluebird”, Ian Ross, Chair of the London County Council Tramways Trust who provided a lot of the funding for the work, said: “First launched in 1932, “Bluebird” was designed to provide an unprecedented level of comfort for passengers and tram crews, rivalling the buses of the time. Although it remained a unique prototype, its legacy lives on through this exquisite restoration. The dedication, patience, and ingenuity of the museum’s team have been truly remarkable, and I am personally in awe of the skills they have demonstrated throughout this project.”
Kate Watts, Crich Tramway Village Curator, added: “After a decade of meticulous restoration, we are absolutely thrilled to welcome ‘Bluebird’ back into service! This magnificent tramcar, with its Art Deco elegance and timeless charm, will undoubtedly be a highlight for our visitors. We can’t wait for you to step aboard and experience a true piece of history.”
On the night 1 was up against another tram in the category as well as two diesel locomotives. The other tram was Modern Electric Tramways 23, a tram which was one of the first trams to be built by founder of the Seaton Tramway, Claude Lane, and after many years in private ownership was moved to Seaton and put on display at the station from September 2024 until the end of the season.
The others in the category were class 20 locomotive 20 228, based at the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway and rebuilt after service in France, and Fowler 0-6-0DH Ribblesdale Cement which can be found at the Tanfield Railway.
Bluebird at dusk showing off its stunning finished restoration.
Crich CEO, Graham Bennett is presented with the award. (Both Photographs courtesy of Crich Tramway Village)
No accompanying photo for the benefit those who’ve not yet seen this stunning restoration? What a shame. Still, it’s a jolly good excuse to head over to the National Tramway Museum’s website, or download the museum’s own App.
Like the one above you mean?
To be fair the photo was added later as I was waiting to be able to download the photos from the press release.
Well done
I had the pleasure of seeing the Bluebird launch in September, which was one of my most memorable visits ever to Crich, and feel this award is so well deserved by the Crich team and even more special as Bluebird comes out on top in an award category covering the whole sphere of electric and diesel railed traction!
I have a small family connection to London and my father remembered the Felthams and I think was aware of No 1 as well. It featured on the cover of the first ever Modern Tramway magazine I had at age of 8, I think it was June 1970, and the tram was displaying the famous ‘EXTRA SPECIAL’ destination indicator on I think a postwar LRTL tour. Later that year I possibly saw No 1 in Clapham Transport Museum but first remember it in the depots at Crich as Leeds 301, then after its repaint into classic London Transport red and cream around the mid 1970s. In an archive Modern Tramway magazine I read about its epic trip from Waltham Cross to Purley, the northern and southern limits of London’s Tramway system, to demonstrate the merits of tramways in 1938, again under the auspices of the LRTL and with significant media publicity at the time. Never in all that time did I dream that one day Bluebird would come back to life and I would have the pleasure of joining the ranks of passengers across generations who have ridden on this historic car. I just regret that the inevitable passage of time prevents me sharing it with my father but when Bluebird takes to the rails now so do family memories as I know how interested he would have been in her.
Before the restoration started in 2014 I plucked up courage and asked if I could see and photograph the interior of No 1 and through the kindness of Ian Ross of the LCC Tramways Trust and the Crich workshop I was allowed to do so which I will always appreciate. I read No 1 up fairly thoroughly as there is of course a facsimile of a booklet produced by the London County Council at around the time the tram entered service in 1932, plus coverage in other tramway publications. Another fascinating event was a demonstration of the historic skills of riveting which the Tramway Museum organised, I think somewhere near Ripley, where Bluebird’s then bare frame was being restored.
So fast forward to 2024 and Bluebird’s amazing debut into passenger service in that splendid 1932 livery evoking all the social hopes, expectation and excitement of that scientific and futuristic age. I am a huge enthusiast of the 1930s and kind of have to pinch myself to realise the present day Bluebird is real!
We went back to Crich for the twilight event in the hope that Bluebird might make an appearance. It was the Saturday and we were not disappointed as she rolled out of the workshop at dusk and ran several passenger trips under night skies, showing a whole new dimension to the daytime experiences I had of her at the launch. It isn’t hard to imagine her impact on the London streets. I do like trolleybuses, to which she ultimately lost the immediate contest for London’s street transport future, but much treasured and loved as the RT family of motorbuses which carried out the postwar tramway replacements are, with their noise and fumes and as the LRTL said, a design ‘outdated before 1939’, I can’t see how they would have compared to what Bluebird offered to Londoners.
But thanks to everyone at Crich who has.made this incredible restoration possible, we can now experience and enjoy it for ourselves. Once again, congratulations to everyone.