{"id":47330,"date":"2022-12-10T10:00:04","date_gmt":"2022-12-10T10:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=47330"},"modified":"2022-12-09T18:17:11","modified_gmt":"2022-12-09T18:17:11","slug":"money-raised-to-bring-balloon-710-back-to-rigby-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=47330","title":{"rendered":"Money raised to bring Balloon 710 back to Rigby Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blackpool Transport have confirmed that their online fundraiser for money to bring back Balloon 710<\/strong> from Wyre Dock to Rigby Road Depot has been successful. Launched in mid-November the campaign was looking to raise \u00a32,500 to pay for the transportation of the tram along the Fylde Coast and within a couple of weeks this has been surpassed allowing plans to be made for its move.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Balloon 710<\/strong> has been acquired by Blackpool Transport to go on display at Tramtown with it set to be initially cosmetically restored to its late 1980s condition when it was \u201cinvolved\u201d in one of Coronation Street\u2019s biggest storylines at the time with Alan Bradley being knocked over by the tram and killed on North Promenade. Since that time an oft asked question has been \u201cwhich tram killed Alan Bradley?\u201d and with it becoming available again the decision was taken that it would be a valued exhibit at Tramtown to become an attraction in its own right.<\/p>\n

710<\/strong> last ran in service as far back as 2007 and was acquired for the then Friends of Fleetwood Trams (later to become the Fleetwood Heritage Leisure Trust) who were planning to have a tram museum in the town. It departed Rigby Road in 2011 and after a trip through the centre of Fleetwood as part of that year\u2019s Tram Sunday event it has been in outside storage ever since. Unfortunately, despite the best of intentions plans for a museum in Fleetwood did not happen and with the Fleetwood Heritage Leisure Trust putting their collection up for disposal thoughts fell to what would happen to the tram.<\/p>\n

There were several false dawns for 710<\/strong>. At one stage it looked as if it could be going to Rossall School but they instead took Twin Trailer 687<\/strong> and then it was reported that the Trolleybus Museum at Sandtoft would be taking it on. But that too fell through which is when Blackpool Transport came in and started a campaign to fund the transportation of the tram to Rigby Road.<\/p>\n

Now that funding is in place preparations will start to loading the tram and moving to across to Rigby Road. Its planned that it will receive a cosmetic restoration to start with \u2013 this will be undertaken by Tramtown volunteers so as not to take any resources from the engineering side of the Heritage Tram Tours operation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blackpool Transport have confirmed that their online fundraiser for money to bring back Balloon 710 from Wyre Dock to Rigby Road Depot has been successful. Launched in mid-November the campaign was looking to raise \u00a32,500 to pay for the transportation … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"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\/47330"}],"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=47330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47331,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47330\/revisions\/47331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}