{"id":12767,"date":"2015-10-12T19:55:54","date_gmt":"2015-10-12T18:55:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=12767"},"modified":"2015-10-12T19:55:54","modified_gmt":"2015-10-12T18:55:54","slug":"hull-96-returns-to-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=12767","title":{"rendered":"Hull 96 returns to service"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two years of painstaking work undertaken largely by a small team of volunteers came to a satisfactory finale on Sunday 11th October, when Hull 96 <\/strong>was officially launched back into service at the Heaton Park Tramway. The tram had operated for several years in its later guise as Leeds 6 <\/strong>in a plain grey livery, including a three year stint of operation at Beamish Museum, and more recently it has received extensive renovation work resulting in it now looking better than it had at any previous time since being preserved.<\/p>\n

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The work carried out on Hull 96 <\/strong>has been extensive despite being carried out on a very modest budget, with many hours devoted to stripping away numerous layers of paint to not only produce a smooth finish but also to uncover the original livery, ensuring that the completed paintwork is much more authentic than when the tram previously ran in its Hull guise at Heaton Park. After a mammoth effort to get the final few jobs finished ahead of its advertised public debut with work parties running all week, 96 <\/strong>was at last unveiled to visitors on 11th October with a special inaugural journey for premium price ticketholders taking place in the early afternoon. The launch itself saw a ribbon across the car’s end platform cut by\u00a0representatives\u00a0of Heritage Painting, who have done an outstanding job of repainting the tram in its original colours following body preparation work by volunteers. After this, the tram joined park stalwart Manchester 765 <\/strong>in traffic to provide a two car service for the rest of the day, no doubt bringing back memories of the time when these two trams maintained the service, long before various subsequent additions to the fleet arrived and the new depot at Lakeside was built. As an aside, the day was also notable as it was the first time that 96 <\/strong>(in any livery) had run in passenger service to the new terminus adjacent to the boating lake, which had been opened whilst it enjoyed its extended holiday at Beamish.<\/p>\n

The launch event itself was a little underwhelming, not helped by the lack of any vintage road vehicles from Hull which it had been hoped would attend; hopefully these can visit at some point in the future for another, bigger event, as they would doubtless create some much more interesting and unique photo opportunities. Oddly, the Deputy Mayor of Hull had visited the tramway the day before the actual launch took place as he was unavailable on the Sunday and as mentioned above, it was left to the team from Heritage Painting to launch the tram. However, everyone who has seen the restored 96 <\/strong>seems to agree that it looks absolutely stunning and it has definitely raised the bar for future projects at Heaton Park. We hope that Hull 96 <\/strong>will now enjoy a long and active career following its latest overhaul and the tram is expected to be a regular performer for the rest of the year as the weather turns cooler.<\/p>\n

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Looking absolutely stunning, Hull 96 is seen on the Middleton Road depot approach track ahead of its public launch on 11th October.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Heritage Painting representatives cut the ribbon to declare Hull 96 available for service again, as MTMS Board Members who were heavily involved in the restoration of the tram look on with pride. (Photos x 2 by Bradley Jones)<\/p><\/div>\n

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Two years of painstaking work undertaken largely by a small team of volunteers came to a satisfactory finale on Sunday 11th October, when Hull 96 was officially launched back into service at the Heaton Park Tramway. The tram had operated … 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":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12767"}],"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=12767"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12771,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12767\/revisions\/12771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}