“Picture in Time” again comes from Blackpool in October 1979 this week.
And in this photo we see a tram which is a distant memory as we its Brush Railcoach 638 which is loading up for Starr Gate at Bispham Station. The tram already looks very well-patronised and the passengers in the queue will almost certainly not get a seat on it. The illuminated sign on top of the shelter advertises Blackpool Zoo, while Williams and Glyn’s Bank, later the RBS, can be seen across the Promenade on the corner of Red Bank Road. This is no more than a memory now as Bispham’s last bank closed in 2018.
And of course its not just the bank that is just a memory! 638 was built as 302 in 1937 and wouldn’t have much longer in service after this photo was taken as it was to be withdrawn in May 1980. It would linger on stored at Rigby Road Depot until 1984 when it was moved into the yard and scrapped. But that little timelines does little justice to the history of the tram as in the 1970s it had been an early conversion to one person operation, although it wasn’t a success and many of the changes were reversed.
Photograph by Donald Brooks, October 1979
Brilliant to see a photograph of 638. Also taken in the illuminations with considerable light contrast, which may have been quite a feat in the 1970s. This is exactly how so many people remember Blackpool’s heritage trams. 638 with its rather crudely panelled over front entrances (to the rear in this view) looking a bit like a mongrel, or the Cinderella of an ageing, make-do-and-mend fleet in an otherwise tramless British mainland.
The late Jeffrey Mackenzie in his ‘Modern Tramway’ reports of the early 1970s described 638 as an ‘unlucky car’ but I saw it in use plenty of times, including in that autumn of 1979 which immediately predated its withdrawal. The only ride I had on it was in that October all the way from Fleetwood to Starr Gate so it was doing main service duties that day. That’s when I discovered it only had a kind of half-partition separating the driver and passengers, a legacy of its one-man-operation experiment. I remember being surprised how loud the shutting on and off of the air compressor valve was, a sound which would normally have been muted by the full partitions. The real surprise was that 638 had the only pair of Allen West controllers still in the passenger service fleet, which the lady driver described as ‘terrible’! This was the only time I experienced this type in use. Roll on car 298 at Crich which will bring this type back after nearly 50 years! One feels they can’t have been that bad if they saw 638 through a 43 year career and there were others around, including car 635/298, into the mid 1970s. Maybe drivers just preferred the familiar feel of the English Electric controllers that far outnumbered them. I seem to remember observing the Allen West controller handle seemed to.require a more deliberate action than the English Electric which may be why the driver didn’t like them. I.also thought 638 might have appeared a bit slower than the by then ‘normal’ English Electric equipped Brush car we rode back to Fleetwood on, but that might have been just a whim. Also by then, 638 must have lost its original Crompton Parkinson motors for English Electric ones, as 298, withdrawn in 1974, has the last set, so it wouldn’t have been a fair test of what the original Allen West/Crompton Parkinson combination would have been like.
Two or three years ago, putting two and two together from what I was told, it appeared that one of the spare sets of ex-Blackpool Brush car accommodation bogies that Crich now holds, comes from car 638. I don’t know if anyone can absolutely confirm this?
Anyway, a brilliant photo absolutely capturing a 1970s evening at Blackpool.lights with hardly any two of the stalwart tram fleet the same by that time! Thank.you for including it and to the photographer for recording what was then an everyday scene and is now history of one of the most wonderful transport operations I ever experienced.
Also note another quirk.of 638 following its attempted one-man conversion: the uneven spread of roof lights across the two saloons on both sides which shows up.well in this view.
Our local.newspaper in Preston, the ‘Lancashire Evening Post’, had a reporter called Alan Redfern who appeared to be interested in the Blsckpool trams, and I remember him publishing an article about the future of trams around the time thst 638 had just been converted and was carrying its overall white livery, and the article included photographs of the car in its OMO condition. That must have been around 1970 when I was 8 years old, but my mother saved it for my scrapbook. I may still have it somewhere!