Blackpool Balloon 704 restoration project announced

Posted on Wednesday 27 March 2019 by Andrew Waddington

Fresh from the news about the delivery of a supply of steel for two new Balloon car underframes at Blackpool’s Rigby Road workshops, it has now been confirmed which trams will be the beneficiaries of these materials. As expected, one new underframe is destined for ‘Princess Alice’ 706, after the appeal to raise funds for its restoration exceeded the £10,000 amount required to build this. The second underframe is, more surprisingly, intended for sister car 704 which is set to be worked on simultaneously with 706!

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Edinburgh Trams win for third year at Chamber of Commerce Awards

Posted on Wednesday 27 March 2019 by Gareth Prior

Edinburgh Trams have been celebrating another award having been given the High Business Growth accolade at the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce Business Awards – the third year that they have been recognised at these awards.

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New Balloon car underframes under construction

Posted on Tuesday 26 March 2019 by Andrew Waddington

An exciting development at Blackpool is the recent delivery of a large quantity of steel to the Rigby Road workshops, which has been supplied to use in the construction of not one, but two new Balloon car underframes. In addition, the manufacture of some components for these has already been started.

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Limited Tramlink service confirmed for 28th March

Posted on Tuesday 26 March 2019 by Gareth Prior

Transport for London have confirmed that a limited service will operate on London Tramlink during the planned strike on Thursday 28th March. This service will mainly consist of trams running between Wimbledon and East Croydon although the very first two trams of the day will run to New Addington. There will no trams at all on the Beckenham Junction and Elmers End routes.

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Picture in Time: Blackpool OMO 11, Glasgow 1297 & Coronation 660

Posted on Tuesday 26 March 2019 by Gareth Prior

Today as we continue our Picture in Time series we have a photo that really makes you want to find a time machine and travel back in time to experience what is going in person!

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Tyne & Wear Metro wins at UK Rail Business Awards

Posted on Monday 25 March 2019 by Gareth Prior

For long suffering passengers who are delayed regularly it may seem a surprise but the Tyne and Wear Metro is celebrating after winning at the Rail Business Awards for helping to transport people for a packed programme of events in summer 2018.

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In Pictures: Blackpool Winter Gold – 23rd March 2019

Posted on Monday 25 March 2019 by Gareth Prior

The final Blackpool Winter Gold event before the full 2019 season gets underway took place over the weekend of Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th March with the standard Winter intensive timetable in operation including trams running between Starr Gate and Fleetwood. With the sun once again shining and all the trams running to Fleetwood at least once in the day another excellent event was enjoyed by Trevor Hall.

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Season ticket prices to see small increase on NET

Posted on Monday 25 March 2019 by Gareth Prior

It will be no April Fool for travellers on Nottingham Express Transit as there will be an increase to season ticket prices from Monday 1st April – although they are only small changes with all prices going up by less than the rate of inflation.

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Around the World in Trams: Palermo 08

Posted on Sunday 24 March 2019 by Gareth Prior

This week we stay on Sicily to feature more images from the tramway in Palermo. This time we take a look at Flexity Outlook no. 08.

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Up they go – Metrolink performance increase again

Posted on Sunday 24 March 2019 by Gareth Prior

If you were suspicious you would think that when there is good news with the performance stats on Manchester Metrolink they are a lot quicker to release the figures as it has only taken just over two weeks for TfGM to publish the statistics for period 12 (3rd February to 2nd March 2019) rather than the usual three to four weeks. And the stats do provide good reading with 91.7% of all trams departing less than two minutes late.

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In Pictures: Sunderland 16 returns to service

Posted on Sunday 24 March 2019 by Gareth Prior

Having spent the best part of the last couple of months out of service with a failed resistor grid, Sunderland 16 made a welcome return to service at Beamish on Saturday 23rd March adding some extra capacity to the tram fleet just as things start to ramp up ahead of April’s Great North Steam Fair.

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This week on British Trams Online

Posted on Sunday 24 March 2019 by Gareth Prior

We head off north of the border this week to bring you some images from Edinburgh:

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Metro Brierley Hill extension gets funding green light

Posted on Saturday 23 March 2019 by Gareth Prior

The West Midlands Metro is set to continue its major expansion in the forthcoming years following the news that the West Midlands Combined Authority have given the final go-ahead for the cash to be made available for the line to Brierley Hill. £449 million is being budgeted for the extension which would open in 2023.

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Picture in Time: South Yorkshire Supertram

Posted on Saturday 23 March 2019 by Gareth Prior

This week we move north from Croydon to Sheffield to start a series of archive images from the Supertram network, starting off with an image during testing.

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In Pictures: Around and about at Beamish

Posted on Saturday 23 March 2019 by Gareth Prior

With it now being less than a month until the Great North Steam Fair kicks off at Beamish it is very much the lull before the storm – especially with it being outside of school holidays as well – with most days seeing up to a couple of trams in service.

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Runaway Snaefell car was travelling and nearly four times line speed

Posted on Saturday 23 March 2019 by Gareth Prior

Ever since Snaefell Mountain Railway 2 overshot Bungalow Station in August 2017 with passengers on board there has been a lot of speculation as to what happened, not helped by the apparent secrecy of the Health and Safety at Work Inspectorate report into just what happened. Now Isle of Man Newspapers have used a Freedom of Information Act request to find out just what happened and it does make for some alarming reading with confirmation that 2 travelled for 1.4km and reached a top speed of 44mph as the crew attempted to bring it to a standstill.

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In Pictures: Edinburgh 276 gets new advert

Posted on Friday 22 March 2019 by Gareth Prior

Christmas is now officially over in Edinburgh following the removal of the Christmas and Hogmanay advert on 276 – only three and half months late! 276 has now become the latest tram to advertise the Parabola development at Edinburgh Park following in the footsteps of 254, 264, 268 and 271.

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Two more battery trams for West Midlands Metro

Posted on Friday 22 March 2019 by Gareth Prior

The next two West Midlands Metro trams to have batteries installed are seeing excellent progress in the fitting of the equipment although at the time of writing neither have been fully completed. The two trams are 23 and 19, which will bring it up to 10 of 21 being able to operate without overhead power.

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M5000 3006 reaches one million not out!

Posted on Friday 22 March 2019 by Gareth Prior

How hard working the trams on Manchester Metrolink are has been brought into the public eye with the news that 3006 has become the very first of the M5000 trams to reach one million kilometres. The tram first carried passengers in February 2010 and just nine years later it has reached the landmark which was achieved as it arrived at Altrincham during the afternoon on Wednesday 20th March.

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In Pictures: Opening Day of 2019 season at Crich

Posted on Thursday 21 March 2019 by Gareth Prior

As we reported at the weekend another season of operation is now underway at the Crich Tramway Village with daily opening starting on Saturday 16th March. The first day saw Leeds pair 345 and 399, Glasgow 22 and Berlin 223 006-4 all in service whilst there were some visiting Aston Martin cars on site. Hazel Quarmby was also there are provides us with the following photos.

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