{"id":50935,"date":"2023-09-06T18:00:03","date_gmt":"2023-09-06T17:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=50935"},"modified":"2023-09-05T20:30:10","modified_gmt":"2023-09-05T19:30:10","slug":"2023-illuminations-season-underway-in-blackpool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=50935","title":{"rendered":"2023 Illuminations season underway in Blackpool"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A sure sign of the evenings starting to draw in is the switching on of Blackpool\u2019s Illuminations and that happened on Friday 1<sup>st<\/sup> September with Sophie Ellis Bextor being given the honour of \u201cflicking the switch\u201d for the 2023 edition of the \u201cgreatest free show on earth\u201d. Of course, not only does this mean that the lights are shining until the start of January but its also the start of the busiest period of the year for the tramway \u2013 both modern and heritage.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>As has become traditional in recent years, the first night of the lights saw no Illumination Tours taking place and so it was Saturday 2<sup>nd<\/sup> September that the first tours ran for this year. Illuminated pair the <strong>Western Train<\/strong> and the <strong>Frigate<\/strong> were joined by <strong>Balloon 717<\/strong> in operating tours on that first night.<\/p>\n<p>Looking at the Heritage Tram Tours website it seems that the pattern of tours running in September will see one Illuminated feature car out Monday-Thursday (usually running two tours) \u2013 the <strong>Trawler<\/strong> looks to be allocated to Mondays, the <strong>Frigate<\/strong> Tuesdays and Thursdays and the <strong>Western Train<\/strong> on a Wednesday. Then on a Friday it appears that both the <strong>Western Train<\/strong> and <strong>Frigate<\/strong> will be out running a couple of tours a piece, Saturdays should see four trams out on tours (an Open Boat, <strong>Western Train<\/strong>, <strong>Frigate<\/strong> and a double decker \u2013 all due to run two tours except the double decker)and then on a Sunday its three trams out during September (Open Boat, <strong>Western Train<\/strong> and <strong>Frigate<\/strong>).<\/p>\n<p>The pattern is revised from October including more tours running on all days of the week during the school Half Term holidays and then from November tours don\u2019t run on every night of the week. Full details of when tours are running and how to book your place can be found at <a href=\"https:\/\/blackpoolheritage.com\/illuminations-tours\/\">https:\/\/blackpoolheritage.com\/illuminations-tours\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Illuminations season also usually sees a new timetable introduced on the core tramway. But that doesn\u2019t look like being the case for 2023. The timetable on the Blackpool Transport website still shows a 15 minute frequency during the day from Starr Gate to Fleetwood with the evenings seeing the Fleetwood frequency down to every 30 minutes but with an intermediate Little Bispham service also running. The timings of this give a 15 minute frequency from Starr Gate north but when returning south from Little Bispham its more uneven with an eight minute gap between trams and then a 22 minute gap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A sure sign of the evenings starting to draw in is the switching on of Blackpool\u2019s Illuminations and that happened on Friday 1st September with Sophie Ellis Bextor being given the honour of \u201cflicking the switch\u201d for the 2023 edition &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=50935\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50935"}],"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=50935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50936,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50935\/revisions\/50936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}