{"id":3187,"date":"2013-03-13T20:42:54","date_gmt":"2013-03-13T20:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=3187"},"modified":"2013-03-13T20:42:54","modified_gmt":"2013-03-13T20:42:54","slug":"blackpool-trams-at-bury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=3187","title":{"rendered":"Blackpool trams at Bury"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three of the Manchester Transport Museum Society’s recently preserved Blackpool trams have been in open storage at a secure site in Bury for some time now, and rarely been depicted in their current home. However, on Sunday 10th March a small party of volunteers from the Heaton Park Tramway went to inspect these trams and carry out a basic examination of their condition. Thanks to this visit, we are now able to bring our readers some recent images of Blackpool cars 702<\/strong>, 708<\/strong> and 752<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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The first MTMS-owned tram to arrive at Bury for temporary storage was Railgrinder 752<\/strong>, which arrived there in August 2011 in order to allow Stockport 5<\/strong> to be accomodated inside the small depot at Heaton Park. It was later joined by Balloon cars 702<\/strong> and 708<\/strong>, both of which wear the 1970s style green & cream livery. 702<\/strong> is expected to move to the park once it can be accomodated undercover there, and should enter service following some remedial work. 708<\/strong> is unlikely to operate again for the forseeable future, having several faults and having last carried passengers back in 2004 – the car is earmarked for a possible future restoration as open top streamliner 245<\/strong>. Unfortunately, both of these trams have suffered some weather damage as a result of being exposed to the elements for over a year, but both have stood up surprisingly well under the circumstances, which is a tribute to how well built these trams were in 1934.<\/p>\n

Whilst it is sad to see these trams subjected to being stored outside for such a long time, hopefully they will not have to wait too long before being more suitably housed. For now, at least all three have survived and can look forward to a more prosperous future having escaped from the Blackpool fleet cull.<\/p>\n

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Our first scene from Bury shows the ex-Blackpool works car 752 in the foreground, with Balloon 702 behind and sister car 708 also visible in the distance.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Railgrinder 752 and Balloon 702 - both with covered headlamps - side by side in their current surroundings.<\/p><\/div>\n

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We now take a look inside the lower deck of car 702, complete with traditional woodwork and swingover seating. Internally this tram is still looking very smart and almost as if it could be pressed into service!<\/p><\/div>\n

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Our final image shows a slightly forlorn looking Balloon 708 with its smarter-looking sister in the background. (All photos by Joe Savage)<\/p><\/div>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three of the Manchester Transport Museum Society’s recently preserved Blackpool trams have been in open storage at a secure site in Bury for some time now, and rarely been depicted in their current home. However, on Sunday 10th March a … 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\/3187"}],"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=3187"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3193,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3187\/revisions\/3193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}