{"id":7266,"date":"2014-04-19T20:07:50","date_gmt":"2014-04-19T20:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=7266"},"modified":"2014-04-19T20:07:50","modified_gmt":"2014-04-19T20:07:50","slug":"balloon-car-named-walter-luff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=7266","title":{"rendered":"Balloon car named ‘Walter Luff’"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of the celebrations to mark the 80th anniversary of Blackpool’s iconic English Electric streamlined trams, a short ceremony was held on the afternoon of Saturday 19th April which saw one of the classic double-deck Balloon cars named ‘Walter Luff’. As most tram enthusiasts now, Luff is widely regarded as the greatest manager of the Blackpool tramway, and it was he who was responsible for the mass modernisation of the fleet during the 1930s, which led to the introduction of the Balloons, Boats and Railcoaches – many of which are still with us today in various forms.<\/p>\n

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The tram chosen to receive this honour was Balloon 717<\/strong>, which is now the closest to an original condition Balloon car in existence. It is believed that its double destination indicators at each end and other traditional features which were restored as part of a major rebuild completed in 2008 led to it being selected to carry the late Walter Luff’s name, in order to showcase how the tram would have looked when he was in charge. It was his daughter Daphne who unveiled the newly fitted wooden name boards at the Pleasure Beach loop; these have been fitted next to the centre entrance doors, in a similar fashion to those on Boat car 230<\/strong>. The boards feature attractive ‘Art Deco’ style lettering and suit the car well, without detracting too much from its authentic appearance.<\/p>\n

Since 717<\/strong> last appeared in service in November 2013, the tram has been revarnished and its previous name ‘Philip R Thorpe’ has been removed from above the cab windscreens. The tram now looks even more stunning than it did before, and should continue as one of the town’s heritage fleet with its new name for many years to come as a permanent memorial to the visionary transport manager who made its creation possible all those years ago.<\/p>\n

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Daphne Luff joins Bryan Lindop and Bob Mason of Blackpool Transport to officially name Balloon car 717 'Walter Luff' on 19th April. (Photo by Gareth Prior)<\/p><\/div>\n

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As part of the celebrations to mark the 80th anniversary of Blackpool’s iconic English Electric streamlined trams, a short ceremony was held on the afternoon of Saturday 19th April which saw one of the classic double-deck Balloon cars named ‘Walter … 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\/7266"}],"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=7266"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7269,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7266\/revisions\/7269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}