{"id":17531,"date":"2017-06-02T20:16:29","date_gmt":"2017-06-02T19:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=17531"},"modified":"2017-06-02T20:16:29","modified_gmt":"2017-06-02T19:16:29","slug":"two-more-blackpool-trams-to-return-to-rigby-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=17531","title":{"rendered":"Two more Blackpool trams to return to Rigby Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a period of time out in the cold, two further Blackpool trams are set to return home to the sanctuary of Rigby Road depot thanks to an agreement between their current owner and the Blackpool Heritage Trust. Both Brush Railcoach 625 <\/strong>and Balloon 726 <\/strong>are presently stored at Fleetwood with the majority of the Fleetwood Heritage Leisure Trust’s tramcar collection, but should soon be making the short road journey back to the depot where they were based for much of their working lives.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Both 625 <\/strong>and 726 <\/strong>were amongst the many old trams that were sold off due to the tramway’s light rail upgrade, and were moved away from their home system shortly after the end of the 2011 season. 726 <\/strong>has resided at two different sites in Fleetwood, whilst 625 <\/strong>initially headed to Knowsley after being acquired by Merseytravel for possible use in connection with the aborted ‘Wirral Waters’ tramway development at Birkenhead. Both cars ended up in private ownership and in storage at the dock yard in Fleetwood, and both have been continuously stored outside since departing from Rigby Road. However, the pair look set to enjoy an upturn in their fortunes in the near future with the welcome news that they will join many of their sisters at Rigby Road – a far more suitable and worthy place for them to be stored.<\/p>\n

Although the news for 625 <\/strong>and 726 <\/strong>is clearly very good, it should be stressed that these trams are merely being stored on behalf of their owner, and there are no plans for either car to join the Blackpool heritage collection. Some restoration work has actually been carried out on car 625<\/strong>, with new coloured glass recently obtained for the tram, but it is not clear how, or if, this work will continue to proceed after the tram moves to Rigby Road. Realistically, these trams will require a huge amount of money and manpower to stand any chance of running in passenger service again – resources which are sadly in scarce supply right now.<\/p>\n

It is not yet known when the two trams will be moved by road, or whether 625 <\/strong>will play any part in the upcoming events to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Brush cars later this year, although as one of the least modified of the surviving cars of this type it would be a worthy addition despite its shabby external appearance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a period of time out in the cold, two further Blackpool trams are set to return home to the sanctuary of Rigby Road depot thanks to an agreement between their current owner and the Blackpool Heritage Trust. Both Brush … 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":[7,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17531"}],"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=17531"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17541,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17531\/revisions\/17541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}