Its time for the last edition of “15 Years Apart” covering the years 2009 and 2024 and once more we’re off to Blackpool to take a look at a couple of images.
Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight? If the shepherd like a refurbished Brush Car in a full advertising livery for Wall’s Ice Cream it is. This advert became a familiar sight on the Blackpool Tramway and even after its vinyls were removed and it was left with a plain red base coat it was still seen in the early years of heritage operation. This image was taken on 11th September 2009 and shows the tram on Pleasure Beach loop.
631 turned out to be the sole enclosed heritage single decker to run in Blackpool during 2024 (ignoring the illuminated feature cars of course) and we see it in this image as it approaches North Pier when working a heritage tour to Fleetwood on 26th May 2024. Its in a version of a green and cream fleet livery with additional bits to celebrate Reginald Dixon. (Both Photographs by Gareth Prior)
That first picture is stunning!
Whatever you think of 631 in its 2009 guise, at least it represented something, i.e. the final guise in the long life of a Blackpool Brush car following various modifications. In its current form the tram is just a mess and it seems rather a cheek to use it for premium price heritage tours – especially when BTS were so close to having 634 running but never got around to commissioning it after the FTT paid for its repaint. Still, their loss is East Anglia’s gain!