{"id":14317,"date":"2016-04-07T20:14:30","date_gmt":"2016-04-07T19:14:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=14317"},"modified":"2016-04-07T20:14:30","modified_gmt":"2016-04-07T19:14:30","slug":"seaton-17-goes-undercover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=14317","title":{"rendered":"Seaton 17 goes undercover"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In an unexpected development we can report that the Seaton Tramway is to get a fourth fully enclosed single deck saloon tram. Crossbench <strong>17<\/strong> is currently in the workshops being converted from its original 1988 condition.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><strong>17<\/strong> was introduced into the Seaton fleet back in 1988 and was probably the UK\u2019s first disabled access tram with some of the seats removable to allow for the wheelchairs to be carried although it was still necessary for ramps to be used. Based on the crossbench design of the Manx Electric Railway, <strong>17<\/strong> was also painted in similar colours to the MER. As the years have worn on the need for <strong>17<\/strong> to be used for wheelchairs has diminished, particularly with the introduction of the three \u201cnew\u201d trams \u2013 <strong>9<\/strong>, <strong>10<\/strong> and <strong>11<\/strong> \u2013 which also have wheelchair accommodation albeit with more cover than that on <strong>17<\/strong>. It has nonetheless proved to be a fairly popular tram although most visitors to Seaton have preferred to travel upstairs on double deckers leading to this decision for its conversion. What is possibly more surprising about this decision is that a few years ago Seaton had acquired the derelict body of Bournemouth tram 101 with a view to converting this into a enclosed saloon tramcar but presumably the work on <strong>17<\/strong> will be cheaper.<\/p>\n<p>The rebuilding of <strong>17<\/strong> continues a tradition of rebuilding trams at Seaton and its Eastbourne predecessor (with <strong>12<\/strong> the most rebuilt of all trams having started off life as a single decker before its two different double deck designs) but this marks the first occasion for many years that the workshops have been involved in this work. <strong>17<\/strong> will also become the first enclosed single decker at Seaton since <strong>12<\/strong>\u2019s conversion way back in 1978 which isn\u2019t a rebuilt full size tram.<\/p>\n<p>It is not known when the work on <strong>17<\/strong> will be completed.<\/p>\n<p>* More photos of the work on <strong>17<\/strong> will be included in a Seaton Tramway gallery which will be added in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_14318\" style=\"width: 422px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?attachment_id=14318\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14318\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-14318\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-14318\" title=\"17-kc\" src=\"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/17-kc-412x550.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"412\" height=\"550\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/17-kc-412x550.jpg 412w, https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/17-kc-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/17-kc.jpg 930w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 412px) 100vw, 412px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-14318\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">17 in Riverside Depot during the early stages of the conversion work. (Photograph by Keith Chadbourne)<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In an unexpected development we can report that the Seaton Tramway is to get a fourth fully enclosed single deck saloon tram. Crossbench 17 is currently in the workshops being converted from its original 1988 condition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14317"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14317"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14320,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14317\/revisions\/14320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}