{"id":5013,"date":"2013-09-02T12:56:43","date_gmt":"2013-09-02T11:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=5013"},"modified":"2013-09-02T12:56:43","modified_gmt":"2013-09-02T11:56:43","slug":"thank-you-and-goodnight-from-boat-605","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=5013","title":{"rendered":"Thank-you and goodnight from Boat 605"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blackpool Boat car 233<\/strong>\/605<\/strong> performed its final passenger journeys at its current home in the North East on Sunday 1st September, which was also the fourth and final day of the ‘Power from the Past’ event at Beamish Museum. As anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock for the last few weeks will no doubt be well aware, the tram has been sold to a new owner in America by the Lancastrian Transport Trust and, barring any unforeseen change of plan, this day marked its final appearance in passenger service on home soil.<\/p>\n

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The Boat car has been extensively used this summer, finally living up to its full potential, and have been numerous opportunities to see this car in use alongside fellow Blackpool trams, Balloon 703<\/strong> (repainted as Sunderland 101<\/strong>) and Marton Box 31<\/strong>. 233<\/strong> ran on all four days of the ‘Power from the Past’ event and ended its lengthy operating career in the UK at the end of the afternoon on September 1st, when it was the last tram to head back to the depot, bringing the curtain down on a highly successful event. Over the past few days, many enthusiasts had flocked to see the tram for one last time, although sadly neither of the British Trams Online<\/em> team could make it. A photo charter also took place on Saturday 31st August, when the tram was posed for the cameras both before and after the museum’s normal opening hours.<\/p>\n

233<\/strong>\/605<\/strong> is now considered as withdrawn and will be prepared for departure, which should see the lifeguards, trolley and gantry removed for its long journey to San Francisco, via Southampton Docks, with departure believed to be booked for Monday 9th September. It is also expected that the British Trams Online<\/em> posters applied to the car last year as acknowledgement for our sponsorship deal, will be removed before the tram leaves Beamish. Recently we were offered the chance to have our posters remain in situ on the tram when it enters service in the USA, potentially allowing us to\u00a0promote this website to an\u00a0international audience. This offer was declined as we do not want anyone to think that we are in any way endorsing the move, and in any case, we feel that this would rather contradict the purposes of British<\/span> Trams Online<\/em>. We would never willingly offer funds towards a project that did not involve a British tram in Great Britain, and so you will not be seeing the name of this website on the Boat car in America.<\/p>\n

Claims have also now appeared online that Blackpool Transport will be undertaking the outstanding work on Standard car 143<\/strong> themselves, and that the LTT will provide neither manpower or funds for this work. As restoring 143<\/strong> for operation in Blackpool was one of the main justifications for selling 233<\/strong> at a huge profit, if this claim is true then it does open up the inevitable question of how the profits from this sale will actually be used. Hopefully the full ugly truth will come out sooner or later, giving the Trust’s few remaining supporters the chance to make a truly informed decision as to whether they wish to be associated with this organisation anymore.<\/p>\n

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An unusually quiet scene at Beamish Town, with Boat car 233 seen early on Friday 30th August. (Photo by Steve Kemp)<\/p><\/div>\n

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Blackpool Boat car 233\/605 performed its final passenger journeys at its current home in the North East on Sunday 1st September, which was also the fourth and final day of the ‘Power from the Past’ event at Beamish Museum. As … 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":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5013"}],"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=5013"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5016,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5013\/revisions\/5016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}