{"id":12078,"date":"2015-08-11T22:38:10","date_gmt":"2015-08-11T21:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=12078"},"modified":"2015-08-11T22:38:10","modified_gmt":"2015-08-11T21:38:10","slug":"hms-blackpool-on-driver-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=12078","title":{"rendered":"‘HMS Blackpool’ on driver training"},"content":{"rendered":"

The sight of heritage and ‘B Fleet’ trams on driver training duties in Blackpool has become an increasingly common one of late, presumably as efforts intensify to increase the number of staff trained on these trams in time for the illuminations season. One working of particular note was the use of the illuminated Warship 736 <\/strong>‘HMS Blackpool’ on Monday 10th August.<\/p>\n

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This represented 736<\/strong>‘s first outing since last December when it was used for a birthday celebration, and follows a spell in the Fitting Shop where it has been undergoing commissioning work. The tram was spotted heading south near Gynn Square and later seen again using the turning circle at Pleasure Beach. Recently trams on driver training duties have received small ‘L’ images in their cabs and the Frigate was no exception to this rule.<\/p>\n

736 <\/strong>is now the 20th traditional tram to operate on the Blackpool system this year, 17 of which have been used on heritage tours. The others are Engineering car 754 <\/strong>and Western Train 733+734 <\/strong>which has been used for a number of private hires. The Train and Frigate will, of course, soon be used much more frequently when they operate illumination tours starting early next month. These two may be the only feature cars to see use during 2015 as it is expected that the Trawler 737 <\/strong>will be stored this year. This car has been pencilled in for a makeover for a while now and seems unlikely to be used until it can be accomodated in the Rigby Road workshops, hopefully in time to allow it to return to use looking brighter than ever in 2016.<\/p>\n

The switch-on night itself, on 4th September, sees the return of the dreaded split service due to the actual ceremony being held at the Tower Festival Headland once again, with tours presumably starting the following night. This also means that no heritage tours will operate on that day but for the rest of the busy illuminations season it will be possible to enjoy a vintage tram ride along the promenade every weekend, with illumination tours also running in the evenings, offering plenty of interest for tram enthusiasts and the general public alike.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

An unusual view of Frigate 736 seen heading north from Pleasure Beach from the vantage point of open top Balloon car 706's top deck on August 10th. (Photo by Rob Bray)<\/p><\/div>\n

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The sight of heritage and ‘B Fleet’ trams on driver training duties in Blackpool has become an increasingly common one of late, presumably as efforts intensify to increase the number of staff trained on these trams in time for the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12078"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12078"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12081,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12078\/revisions\/12081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}