The recent week-long 1940s event at Crich Tramway Village featured a special appearance by an unusual visitor: a Spitfire aircraft, which was prominently displayed at Town End for the whole week. Co-incidentally while this event was in full swing, another Spitfire could also be seen alongside the tram tracks on Blackpool promenade, with the plane on static display close to the Tower over the weekend of 8th & 9th August for the annual summer air show.<\/p>\n
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Traditionally the August 1940s weekend is one of the busiest events of the year at Crich, and so for 2015 it was expanded to last for seven days, although most key activities were still focussed on the weekend. The Spitfire was the latest in a series of vehicles other than trams to appear prominently at special events this season, following on from the recent visits of a preserved London trolleybus from Sandtoft and the ‘Battle Bus’ from the London Transport Museum collection. This joined the usual attractions such as re-enactors in period costume, live music and other visiting vehicles from the era. Some criticism has been seen relating to the weekdays which some visitors found rather disappointing, however most feedback on the event – and the weekend in particular – have been positive as usual.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile in Blackpool, and some glorious sunny weather (anyone would think it was summer!) combined with increased visitor numbers ahead of the air show provided a very welcome boost to loadings on the heritage tram tours, with two Boat cars in use on Saturday 8th August. The following day, and the air show itself saw Bolton 66 <\/strong>and ‘Princess Alice’ 706 <\/strong>in action, but unfortunately the tramway struggled to cope with the masses of people viewing the display during the afternoon. As a result of the large volume of people spilling onto the tramway after the show had ended, there were severe delays to the tram service and this resulted in many people having a very long wait to catch a tram. Despite the air show always being a big draw for visitors, no extra trams were rostered on this date with all of the ‘B Fleet’ being confined to the depot, despite extra drivers having recently been trained on these trams. Instead it was left to the infamous rival promenade bus service to clean up the crowds, although even at that it was a long time before normal service was fully restored. Further complications arose due to traffic jams, with Lytham Road being gridlocked which delayed the heritage cars’ return to Rigby Road depot. Hopefully, lessons have been learned and every effort will be made to increase the tram output for next year’s event – perhaps with a more intensive heritage service, which could certainly help to shift the crowds?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The recent week-long 1940s event at Crich Tramway Village featured a special appearance by an unusual visitor: a Spitfire aircraft, which was prominently displayed at Town End for the whole week. Co-incidentally while this event was in full swing, another … Continue reading