“Picture in Time” again comes from Blackpool today and we continue to take a look at a 1979 LRTA tour in November 1979 which featured Blackpool cars Dreadnought 59 and Jubilee 761.
If there has been one constant in enthusiast tram tours over the years it has been photo stops to allow those all important images to the captured. And this was no different and in the below image we see the two trams at Thornton Gate. There may have been a slight break in the weather if you judge by the willing participants on the upper deck of the Dreadnought.
59 is, of course, the last surviving Dreadnought and was built in 1902 by the Midland Railway Carriage and Wagon. It has not run since 1990 when it operated in Blackpool and can now be found at the Tramway Museum Society’s Clay Cross store, where it moved to in 1995 having been back at Crich for five years. In 1979 it carried a traditional livery, advertising the Pleasure Beach on one side and on the other Darbyshires’ Prize Bread, from a Blackpool bakery that closed not long afterwards.
Photograph by Donald Brooks, 25th November 1979
Back the in the mid eighties it was possible to buy a Travelcard and be offered this diverse choice of vehicles in ordinary service, such was the joy of using the Blackpool TramwaY in that era, Up to 1990, Hill of Howth 10 also offered open top rides on hot days and Illumination weekends. Whilst I do not spend every waking hour reminiscing, I would given anything to relive those days.
I had a 3 day Travelcard in (I think!) 1986. I commuted each day from my home in Sheffield (I got free travel on the train, as I worked then for British Rail). I think I rode on most (obviously pre flexity) trams, including some visitors. Halcyon days indeed, and on one occasion on the train between Sheffield and Preston I was hauled by 47484 Isambard Kingdom Brunel on a then service to Glasgow (I think). Fabulous memories………