{"id":5888,"date":"2013-12-05T19:44:52","date_gmt":"2013-12-05T19:44:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=5888"},"modified":"2013-12-05T21:20:29","modified_gmt":"2013-12-05T21:20:29","slug":"blackpool-tramway-affected-by-severe-storms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=5888","title":{"rendered":"Blackpool tramway affected by severe storms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Much of the country has been severely affected by adverse weather conditions on Thursday 5th December, and the Fylde coast was no exception. Despite the multi-million pound investment in a new sea wall for Blackpool’s promenade over the past decade, the seafront was severely affected with the whole of the promenade, tramway and adjacent roadway underwater!<\/p>\n

Understandably, the tramway was severely affected by this extreme weather. By lunchtime, Police had closed off much of the promenade for safety reasons. Inititally this led to the tramway being closed between Manchester Square and North Pier, with a split service operating involving trams running south of the crossovers at Foxhall, and between North Pier and Fleetwood Ferry. As the storm worsened, all southbound trams were forced to terminate at Gynn Square. The chaos continued with Police insisting that passengers could not leave a Flexity tram in Blackpool for their own safety at one point in the day, and the Unimog 939<\/strong> called out to clear debris from the tramway. Even this wasn’t enough to restore a through service; in fact by the late afternoon, the situation had become so severe that a reduced tram service was only running between Bispham and Fisherman’s Walk, Fleetwood, largely due to power issues. During the early evening a service was restored between North Pier and Fleetwood Ferry although trams could not run further south due to severe flooding. Instead, a replacement bus service was provided although this was diverted away from the promenade road itself for obvious reasons, along with all other bus services.<\/p>\n

Despite this inevitable disruption, it is quite\u00a0impressive that Blackpool Transport managed to maintain any sort of tram service throughout the day, and as this may well have been the worst weather experienced by the Bombardier Flexity2 trams in their short lives so far, the cars coped well with their latest challenge. As much as many enthusiasts may miss the ‘good old days’ of the traditional trams providing a year-round service, it is hard to imagine the Centenary and Jubilee cars carrying on in the face of such adversity!<\/p>\n

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A rather grim scene with Unimog 939 clearing the tracks of debris, leading Flexity 004 along the deserted promenade back towards the depot. The pair are seen at St Chad's Road. (Photo by Bradley Jones)<\/p><\/div>\n

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Much of the country has been severely affected by adverse weather conditions on Thursday 5th December, and the Fylde coast was no exception. Despite the multi-million pound investment in a new sea wall for Blackpool’s promenade over the past decade, … 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":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5888"}],"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=5888"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5913,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5888\/revisions\/5913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}