Continuing his series of photo essays, David Simper took his twin lens reflex camera to Talbot Road to photograph the trams using the extension to the Holiday Inn hotel and the railway station. The sun came out for him, though this made handling shadows a bit tricky.
I doubt that Blackpool would be Blackpool without its trams. By the end of the ’00s, the tram system was down at heel and effectively close to closure. While the vehicles looked lovely, they were well passed their sell by date, a long way below modern standards of comfort and reliability. The concept of a Fylde Coast light rail scheme was turned down, but £100m to renew the current system was granted by Government.
This meant removing close to all elements of the old system, allowing track, overhead line equipment and vehicles, all to be replaced. With some fanfare, the fully refurbished system was reopened in April 2012. Over this time what had been ‘the trams’ had become the ‘heritage trams’ being replaced in general use by the state-of-the-art Bombardier Flexity II vehicles. People noticed that the trackwork opposite North Pier suddenly included stub turnouts pointing suggestively up the Talbot Road hill towards the Blackpool North railway station.
These turnouts had been paid for within the European Union funded SINTROPHER project. This was a study project headed up by urban planning and transport academic, the late Sir Peter Hall. It set out to consider the case for the use of tram-train vehicles and other light rail investment within urban regeneration strategies for peripheral areas of the European Union. The project brought together academics and transport professionals from Germany, France, Netherlands, Britain (Blackpool) and Belgium. It helped to make the case for the Blackpool tramway extension.
The Sintropher work provided a concept design and a favourable Benefit Cost Ratio, which enabled a full business case to be put together, which in turn allowed an application for Government grant money to implement the scheme. In turn this was combined with the Talbot Gateway II project, which provided the site for platforms within what is now the Holiday Inn hotel complex. With the scheme constructed, the pandemic delayed its opening, finally achieved in June 2024. The new service has settled well into Blackpool’s transport routine.
Two new trams were purchased to enable sea front service frequencies to be maintained, bringing the Bombardier Flexity II fleet size to eighteen. With vehicles proceeding north and south from the railway station, all sea front attractions between Starr Gate and Fleetwood Ferry, hotels, Cleveleys and Fleetwood are now tram accessible. The extension provides good connectivity with heavy rail services at Blackpool North railway station, with integrated ticketing available through Northern Railway. Now the North Fylde has public transport access to the national rail network, something it had lacked for years.
Blackpool’s tourist trade offers a ready potential market to the new services. The Pleasure Beach theme park is likely to be a significant destination; this crucial attraction has always had little bus access, the tram can drop off at the main gate. Hopefully all sea front attractions have amended their websites to reflect the fact that they now have light rail connectivity to the railway station.
However, light rail services do operate in both directions. Local people living within walking distance of a tram stop now have light rail access to Sainsbury’s, One Bickerstaffe Square (council offices, Subway, Railside, The Platform, Post Office), Gym, Mr Basrai’s, Topping Street speciality shopping, Dickson Road shops, pubs and bars, including Funny Girls, the Holiday Inn and Marco Pierre White restaurant, and the railway station. The Central Library and Grundy Art gallery are nearby, as are the Abingdon Street shops and market, and Edward Street eateries. Soon the extension will also serve the Multiversity fronting onto George Street.
There is a platform at the bottom of Talbot Road for people using a Blackpool North service, who don’t need to go all the way there (and have to walk back).
It would be nice to think that the tramway could be extended further, providing a real and very green alternative to car travel in Blackpool, but that prospect seems a long way off. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see how the new extension’s ridership grows over the next few years. For those in any doubt, Blackpool and Wyre issued concessionary travel cards can be used on the tramway, but not those issued in other areas.
I have captured ten shots of the trams in operation on the extension and I think these catch the flavour. I’ll be returning to this subject frequently over the years. The twin lens reflex film camera proved to work well for the task, including its square format. I may use other cameras in future to see how they work in this situation. The twin lens reflex offers twelve frames a 120 roll, which is a useful number for a little project such as this. The waist level finder should make people photography simpler (it’s less obvious that a photo is being taken), but the novel sight of such a now obsolete camera does attract people’s eyes.
This has been a very nice little project, which I will repeat. I hope the pictures taken will one day form part of the service’s archive. If not, I very much enjoyed taking them and hope you like looking at them.
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