Much of the country has been severely affected by adverse weather conditions on Thursday 5th December, and the Fylde coast was no exception. Despite the multi-million pound investment in a new sea wall for Blackpool’s promenade over the past decade, the seafront was severely affected with the whole of the promenade, tramway and adjacent roadway underwater!
Understandably, the tramway was severely affected by this extreme weather. By lunchtime, Police had closed off much of the promenade for safety reasons. Inititally this led to the tramway being closed between Manchester Square and North Pier, with a split service operating involving trams running south of the crossovers at Foxhall, and between North Pier and Fleetwood Ferry. As the storm worsened, all southbound trams were forced to terminate at Gynn Square. The chaos continued with Police insisting that passengers could not leave a Flexity tram in Blackpool for their own safety at one point in the day, and the Unimog 939 called out to clear debris from the tramway. Even this wasn’t enough to restore a through service; in fact by the late afternoon, the situation had become so severe that a reduced tram service was only running between Bispham and Fisherman’s Walk, Fleetwood, largely due to power issues. During the early evening a service was restored between North Pier and Fleetwood Ferry although trams could not run further south due to severe flooding. Instead, a replacement bus service was provided although this was diverted away from the promenade road itself for obvious reasons, along with all other bus services.
Despite this inevitable disruption, it is quite impressive that Blackpool Transport managed to maintain any sort of tram service throughout the day, and as this may well have been the worst weather experienced by the Bombardier Flexity2 trams in their short lives so far, the cars coped well with their latest challenge. As much as many enthusiasts may miss the ‘good old days’ of the traditional trams providing a year-round service, it is hard to imagine the Centenary and Jubilee cars carrying on in the face of such adversity!
A rather grim scene with Unimog 939 clearing the tracks of debris, leading Flexity 004 along the deserted promenade back towards the depot. The pair are seen at St Chad's Road. (Photo by Bradley Jones)
Well done everybody at Blackpool Transport for working tirelessly to ensure the service continued to operate safely where possible. Hope the clean up efforts aren’t as miserable and time consuming as its looks.
F2s & Starrgate Depot really shown how durable they are. Keeping any sort of service going in what was a serious storm like no other in recent time
Yes, well done BTS, service only curtailed when the prom was closed to all traffic or when affected by power supply problems which were only to be expected given the severe winds. And at least they provided replacement buses, instead of just redirecting passengers to scheduled bus services with consequent overcrowding and delays to the bus services.
The picture tells it all regarding the prevailing conditions. Once again well done for best efforts in very trying conditions.
I agree that Blackpool Transport did a good job to keep the trams running and of course praise is also due to the council maintenance staff who were working on securing the illuminations etc. during very difficult circumstances. This was a severe storm, even by Blackpool’s standards but it should be mentioned that before the improved sea defences were constructed it was not unusual for there to be complete flooding in the South Shore area at times of high tides and high winds. During these floods the tram service was often suspended south of Talbot Square with several cars stacked there waiting out their time for the return journey.