We often write about days to remember for the Blackpool tramway – but Monday 26th March was a day that Blackpool Transport would probably rather forget about! This is because of two separate incidents, which affected both LRT and heritage trams, and caused major disruption to passengers.<\/p>\n
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The day’s woes started when a motor car was involved in an altercation with a tram at the Larkholme Lane traffic lights, Anchorsholme. Just to add insult to injury, the tram affected was\u00a0Flexity\u00a0018 <\/strong>– the newest tram in the fleet, which had only debuted in service a few weeks earlier! 018 <\/strong>sustained some dented and scratched panels at one end. The tram service was affected for approximately three hours due to this incident, with the Line 1 bus service put under considerable pressure as a result. No tram replacement buses were sent out, possibly a consequence of current staff shortages at BTS.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, accidents involving cars and trams seem to be increasingly common of late, whilst there have been a worrying number of issues with motorists driving onto reserved tram track and subsequently getting stuck so far this year.<\/p>\n Whilst the breakdown gang were attending to the chaos at Anchorsholme, Brush Railcoach 621 <\/strong>suffered a rare breakdown for this normally reliable class of tram, with a controller fault crippling it at Waterloo Road on a northbound heritage working. This caused enough concern for the pantograph to be lowered. With engineers otherwise engaged, Balloon 717 <\/strong>was sent to the rescue and ran ‘bang line’ to retrieve the defective Brush car, before propelling it back to Rigby Road, with loanee Brush car 630 <\/strong>replacing its sister for the rest of its shift. This is believed to be the first time that 621 <\/strong>has failed since its celebrated return to service last September; not bad going really for an 81 year vehicle which had been stored between 2004 and 2017! Nonetheless, this was definitely a very bad day at the office for Blackpool Transport, and one that many passengers would not care to re-live any time soon!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We often write about days to remember for the Blackpool tramway – but Monday 26th March was a day that Blackpool Transport would probably rather forget about! This is because of two separate incidents, which affected both LRT and heritage … Continue reading