{"id":8543,"date":"2014-08-06T15:39:56","date_gmt":"2014-08-06T14:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=8543"},"modified":"2014-08-12T12:38:37","modified_gmt":"2014-08-12T11:38:37","slug":"heritage-trams-spice-up-fleetwood-tram-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=8543","title":{"rendered":"Heritage trams spice up Fleetwood Tram Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"

The annual Fleetwood Festival of Transport, more commonly known as ‘Tram Sunday’, took place on Sunday 20th July 2014 with the usual mix of vintage transport displays, trade stalls and family entertainment filling the streets of Fleetwood, which were closed off to all but pedestrians for the duration of the event. However, it was, quite rightly, the heritage tram fleet which stole the show with a credible six historic trams appearing at the festival this year.<\/p>\n

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Following on from the successful heritage shuttle operated in 2013, a more ambitious plan was devised this year with a three car vintage service operating between Fisherman’s Walk (Fleetwood) and North Pier (Blackpool). For a number of reasons the intended half-hourly frequency was not always maintained, but despite this the operation was a big success with plenty of visitors being tempted to enjoy a nostalgic tram ride to and from the main event. The service commenced with the popular trio of Pantograph car 167 <\/strong>(making its first appearance at this event since 1998), ‘Princess Alice’ 706 <\/strong>and Fleetwood Box 40<\/strong>. The latter undoubtedly stole the show, making its first appearance in passenger service this year, and its only such outing before moving to Crich for the remainder of the season. To provide additional interest, 167 <\/strong>was retired after two trips and replaced by Open Boat 230<\/strong>, a choice which proved popular as the predicted rain failed to materialise. Unfortunately a minor fault with Bolton 66 <\/strong>meant that its advertised appearance did not occur but with such a fine selection of trams to enjoy its absence was hardly noticeable.<\/div>\n
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In addition to the operating trams, two more heritage cars were on static display at the other end of Fleetwood, these being Standard 147 <\/strong>and Balloon 717<\/strong>. Both of these trams were taken over by the wonderfully named ‘Squirrel & Tiffin’. For one day only, 147 <\/strong>became the ‘Tramera Obscura’ with its upper deck windows blocked out, whilst 717<\/strong>‘s top deck had been transformed into a garden inhabited by various knitted creatures! Another bizarre innovation for 2014 was provided in the form of poetry readings on the heritage trams, which met with a rather mixed response, particularly when paying passengers were left behind due to the readers occupying seats on the Boat car.<\/div>\n
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All in all, although ‘Tram Sunday’ as a whole is widely considered to be a far cry from its former self by many transport enthusiasts due to a declining number of vehicle exhibits and the shift\u00a0from transport-orientated memorabilia to more general interest stalls which has led to suggestions that the event now resembles a car boot sale, the trams seemed to have a good day and any event that provides a positive showcase for the heritage fleet can only really be a good thing. Hopefully some of the minor issues experienced this year can be reviewed to make next year’s event even better.<\/div>\n
A photo gallery featuring various scenes from the 2014 festival will be added to the main website in due course.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The annual Fleetwood Festival of Transport, more commonly known as ‘Tram Sunday’, took place on Sunday 20th July 2014 with the usual mix of vintage transport displays, trade stalls and family entertainment filling the streets of Fleetwood, which were closed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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\/8543"}],"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=8543"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8680,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8543\/revisions\/8680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}