In this latest photographic series – and as part of our usual December celebration month – we will be featuring “The Completely Random A-Z of Trams in the British Isles!”. The premise is quite simple, each day the series runs (obviously as there are only 26 letters in the alphabet and 31 days in the month it won’t quite be featuring every day during December) we feature a photo that represents that letter – some are more obvious than others, in fact some letters we could probably have run a complete series on its own!, but we do have something for every letter in the alphabet. There may some more obvious examples for some of the letters but this is mainly what first came into my head when planning the series! To start us off we have A is for Anniversary.
If there is one thing tramways seem to be do well – especially heritage tramways – it is celebrate anniversaries. Whether that be a specific event just for that anniversary or part of a wider event it will be marked in some way as we all get to celebrate the longevity of a particular tram or tramway. With tramways now having been around for some time – with many heritage tramways now having run for as long, or longer, than first generation systems – recent years have seen many, many anniversary celebrations take place and 2024 looks like being no different with Crich already announcing plans to celebrate 60 years of electric trams!
The anniversary which we use to represent this letter is the 40th Anniversary of the Beamish Tramway. This was celebrated in 2013 with a special event being held in April – “Our Friends Electric”. As well as visiting trams being loaned to Beamish for the event, Newcastle 114 was chosen as to receive special between deck boards to commemorate the occasion (boards which were repurposed for the 50th anniversary earlier this year) as well as carrying flowers to truly although a celebration to take place. 114 is featured in this photo outside the depot with Blackpool Boat 233 alongside, which at the time was a resident ay Beamish. (Photograph by Gareth Prior, 4th April 2013)