Metrolink 1003 at Ladywell, by David Monaghan.

This post really is all about the pictures.

Railfans have a penchant for spotting the rare, the unusual, especially where liveries are concerned. These photos certainly qualify, as they show what is, to my knowledge, the first and thus far only member of Manchester’s first generation T68/T68A light rail vehicles to be formally repainted in the yellow and silver paint scheme adopted for the new Bombardier M5000 trams and Metrolink’s corporate rebranding.

I wasn’t surprised that the move was coming — after all, at least one promotional image showed both the old and the new trams wearing the updated livery, as seen here – but I wasn’t aware any of the Ansaldo trams actually had been repainted until I saw David Monaghan’s images of car 1003 posted on the Friends of Heaton Park Tramway Facebook group the other day. David was kind enough to let me share these images here. All were, he notes, taken on Sunday 19th February 2012 at various locations along the Eccles route, between Media City UK and Ladywell stations. It was, you will note, a beautifully sunny day in Manchester — not, as it turns out, such a contradiction after all.

M5000 tram 3006 loads at Manchester Piccadilly, 29 January 2012.

Unfortunately, I really didn’t spend any time railfanning Metrolink during my recent UK trip, making only a single round-trip out to Heaton Park, as duly and copiously noted elsewhere. In fact, the image at right is the best of a handful of mediocre shots I snapped whilst waiting for my ride from Picadilly to Heaton. Alas, after all my blog posts and excitement over these new trams, I didn’t even ride one of them, having been transported to and from the park on Ansaldo cars in the old livery.

David’s photos, then, offer a tantalising glimpse of what is to come, as T68/a cars work their way through the upgrade process over the next few years. Tramoraks will thus have the opportunity to record vehicles in two liveries operating side-by-side as overhauls continue and the system undergoes an exciting period of expansion. So we see here.

Oh, and before we move on to more of David’s photos: You’ll note that I referred to 1003 as the first car formally repainted in the new scheme. As reported on the T68 Wikipedia page and also here, car 1015 received a temporary version of the new colours (and a temporary, fictional road number, 1030) in connection with its appearance on a certain soap opera which featured a tram crash as part of its 50th anniversary storyline. I don’t need to mention the name. You know what show it is.

Writes David of his photos: “Not many side on views of 1003 i’m afraid it was just a case of catch the tram and shoot the image (and it’s my first SLR camera so still on a learning curve with it).”

You are too humble, sir. Lots of great views here, and I thank you for sharing them. Readers: Click the images to view them in their full, crisp glory.

A sun-drenched view at Media City. It doesn't always rain in Manchester.

Near Harbour City.

I think the new livery is particularly flattering from this angle.

Contrasting liveries as 2003 and 3016 meet at Media City.

I really love this shot of 2003 and 3010 gliding past one another. Not having ridden an M5000 yet, my only critique is that their electronic destination signs aren't the most photogenic I've seen -- a minor gripe, I concede!

T68A car 2003 departs Ladywell, where a conspicuous CCTV camera stands guard on a sunny Sunday morning.

We close with an attractive three-quarters view of 5000 car 3015 at Langworthy, showing the side treatment to good effect as well as Manchester's railway-level platform doors.

One of the vandalized trolleys, Connecticut Co. 1326, seen at the museum in happier times. This 2009 photo is by flickr user improbcat, and used via Creative Commons license. Click for photostream.

A wee bit of editorializing, I know. How else to describe yet another gang of copper thieves plundering historic vehicles for illicit profits?

The Hartford Courant was more restrained in its Web headline, “Thieves strip metal from historic trolleys,” about volunteers’ discovery that four vehicles at the Connecticut Trolley Museum had been vandalized by metal thieves sometime between late January and last weekend.

According to the Courant, thieves “pried brass hardware such as window latches and handrail stanchions from the wood, and in the process the wood was damaged. They also cut electrical components containing copper from the control stands that are used to operate the trolleys …”

The newspaper goes on to report how the vandalism came to light a few days ago:

The damage was discovered Saturday during a gathering of trolley museum volunteers from throughout the east. A group wanted to check out some of the trolleys in the collection and when they traveled to the car barn a short distance down the line from the museum’s main campus the damage and theft were discovered, [museum official Tim] Lesniak said. The car barn where the thefts took place was last checked in early January, he said.

Mr. Lesniak told the paper the loss of fixtures and electrical equipment is estimated in the tens of thousands of dollars. For a volunteer organization committed to the preservation of historic vehicles such as these, the loss is as demoralizing as it will be costly.

“The whole point was to say we’ve saved the cars from being scrapped,” museum board member Xian Clere told the newspaper. “To have the cars piecemeal scrapped under our feet, that hits at a personal level.”

According to the Courant report, the damaged vehicles were two Connecticut Co. passenger cars, an Iowa freight car and a Chicago elevated car. The museum’s own account of the damage identifies the three trolleys as :

• Connecticut Co. car 1326, a double-truck closed car built by Osgood Bradley in 1910.
• Connecticut Co. open car 840, a 1905 J.M. Jones product reputed to have been the last open car to operate in revenue service in the United States.
• Centerville Albia & Southern Ry. Co. 101, a 1915 freight car built by the American Car Co. and acquired by the museum in 2009.
• The fourth vehicle, not specifically identified on the museum’s website, “was already partially disassembled.”

A parenthetical aside: As I type this, I’m listening to BBC Radio Leicester’s morning programme on my iPhone. Imagine my surprise to hear a report that rail services between Birmingham New Street and Leicester have been disrupted this morning due to — what else — suspected cable theft in the area of Nuneaton.  Aside from my obvious Anglophile tendencies, aside from the fact that I rode that very route a few weeks ago (and no, I didn’t steal the bloody cable), this serves as a reminder that the scourge of metal theft is international and not limited to historic railways. Recall this post from last March, in which I looked at the issue from a transatlantic perspective after thieves struck the venerable Manx Electric Railway, stealing what BBC News described as “a substantial length of copper cable” from the tramway’s overhead lines.

When I wrote that post, copper was selling at $4.47 a pound, as reported by kitcometals.com and had topped $4.60 in mid-February 2011 – quite a jump from early 2009, when it dropped to about $1.25. It’s down to about $3.78 at present — still enough, apparently, to attract criminals who apparently are finding ways to translate the stolen commodity into cash. As the Courant notes in reference to the Connecticut incident:

The theft matches a pattern of metal thefts across the state where people have pried brass plates from war monuments, hacked metal objects from grave makers, and stolen old lighting fixtures that they could trade to scrap dealers for a few dollars.

Shame and culpability rest not just with the thieves, but with those dealers who either don’t know or don’t care where the scrap they buy is coming from. I discussed some suggested solutions in the March 2011 Isle of Man blog post. It’s hard to imagine any solutions being successful without cooperation from conscientious scrap merchants.

In the meanwhile, local police in Connecticut are investigating the case, while the trolley museum plans a fundraising drive. Would-be donors may call (860) 627-6540, or send donations to the Connecticut Trolley Museum, P.O. Box 360, East Windsor, CT 06088.

For more on the Connecticut robbery, also see:

• “The Connecticut Trolley Museum falls prey to vandals in search of precious metals,” Feb. 20, 2011 WGGB-TV report with video.

Bob Hill gives instruction as I ease Stockport 5 out of the depot yard and onto the mainline at Heaton Park, Manchester.

It was only days later, once I was back on the ground in the United States, on a surprisingly balmy winter afternoon, that I allowed the enormity of it to wash over me.

I got drenched in Sheffield. I basked in sunshine the following, brisk morning whilst experiencing the joys of Nottingham and its sleek modern trams for the first time in the company of new friend Jack Gordon. And I had seen the sights of multicultural Leicester from the top decks of bouncy, fast-moving Arriva buses.

The welcome I received at Manchester’s Heaton Park Tramway was the icing on a lovely cake. Not just a casual Sunday visitor. Not just another rabid tramorak with a camera. No, the lads I had come to know from Facebook and other Internet exchanges welcomed me warmly, as Joe Savage introduced me round the tramshed as Roger, “from America,” the chap with the tramway blog.

Blackpool 623 eases down the mainline toward the park gates. The Loughborough-built Brush car entered service at the resort in 1937 as 286. It formally entered service at the museum one week before I visited.

Of course I would have been perfectly happy had my visit consisted of meeting the volunteers and enthusiasts and getting to ride the museum’s new star, streamlined 1937 Blackpool Brush car 623. But no. Joe managed to arrange a little hands-on experience with another comparatively recent arrival, Stockport 5.

It is fitting, perhaps, that the first (and for the moment only) vehicle I ever drove in Britain was not a fume-blowing automobile but a zippy four-wheeled Edwardian tramcar. The Preston-built 1901 open-topper is not the first tram I have ever driven, of course. That distinction belongs to DC Transit 766 (as it was then still called; read more here), a 1918 product of Ohio’s G.C. Kuhlman Co. which rang down the curtain on Washington’s streetcar system 50 years and one day before my visit to Heaton Park. I was allowed behind the controls of that car on a misty August afternoon in 1987, then not quite 14, at the original National Capital Trolley Museum in Wheaton, Md.

A dozen years would pass before I once again notched a streetcar into motion, when the good folks at the Halton County Radial Railway allowed me to  take a massive steel Toronto Peter Witt car for a spin one sunny summer day. That was a good 12 or 13 years ago. Thus, each of my tram-driving experiences has been in a different country and separated by more than a decade. At this rate, perhaps I should plan on driving a Melbourne tram sometime around 2025 …

Guard Martin James Bryan peers forward from the back platform as I inch the car toward the end of the track at the park gates.

So the experience was not unfamiliar when Heaton Park’s Bob Hill began my tutorial before I inched Stockport 5 out of the depot yard and onto the main line. Quite an experience, that, rolling beneath a canopy of trees along the double-track section of line which began life as a siding on the original Manchester tramway system. The museum’s depot was built as a massive passenger shelter for tram passengers visiting the popular municipal park aboard cars like the museum’s premier tram, Manchester “California” car 765 of 1914. Perhaps I didn’t quite look the part of an Edwardian motorman in a hoodie and khakis — likewise Bob in a sturdy flannel coat and stocking cap for such a winter’s day — but Martin James Bryan certainly did in his role as conductor, or “guard” in Manchester parlance. Joe, meanwhile, with his quintessentially modern “high-viz” vest, ran ahead with my camera to shoot the scene for posterity.

No, I was not a stranger to the general concept of driving a conventional early 20th century tramcar. Then again, it was only my third attempt in a quarter-century. The first two cars were large, long, heavy and comparatively advanced North American vehicles with “deadman” controls. Stockport 5 is a rather different animal. Aside from its beautiful vintage bodywork — many British cars were built to essentially Victorian designs well into the 20th century — it is of course tall, but not long, and bouncy on its single four-wheel truck (originally from an Oporto coal car). The only operational aspect that was something of an anomaly (and similar to the other trams I have driven) is that the car is now equipped with air brakes. While not an original feature, that apparently was a requirement for the newly-restored tram to operate on Blackpool’s tramway in the 1990s.

Four notches along a wooded section of the line.

Oh yeah, and it’s surprisingly fast. Power is fed to the motors on conventional trams by slowly rotating a large controller handle through a series of notches. The experienced motorman knows how to do this deftly so that the ride is smooth and comfortable — likewise how to do it without advancing the handle too quickly and blowing a circuit-breaker. I didn’t trip any fuses, but it was obvious that I was every inch a novice. ”She’s very forgiving,” Bob gently advised as I piloted the tram, herky-jerky, along the scenic line that now extends past the depot, through wooded areas of the park, across busy footpaths and ultimately ends near the park’s popular boathouse.

Even so, to those of us raised solidly in the automobile age, the swift acceleration after each notch on a tram can be startling. One notch on Stockport 5 produced something like actual motion. Two notches brought us up to a comfortable gait. Three notches was, well, a little exhilarating. At four notches I felt like air-traffic control better have cleared this thing for takeoff.

Overcast, yes, but at least it isn't raining as Martin swings the pole at the boathouse terminus. This angle gives a good view of the tram's Victorian lineage, its bodywork reminiscent of 19th century horsecars.

That was nothing, I gather, compared with how they used to open ‘er up on the wide-open stretches of the Blackpool tramway north of the resort on the line to Fleetwood. One can only imagine. But with many curves and meandering walking paths throughout Heaton Park, serious speed never lasts for long. In fact, it was almost more thrilling to slow Stockport 5 to a walk, gong clanging, as the tram rolled past parkgoers waiting patiently at the crossings and waving. Dogs, cyclists and joggers, on the other hand, made me nervous indeed, fortunately without cause.

I’ve lost track of how many round trips we did; perhaps three. Every time I thought it was time to turn over the controls, Bob seemed all too ready to point me toward the other end of the car to take us back whence we had come. I particularly enjoyed our layovers at the two-track boathouse terminus, where we had to wait for regular service car 623 to depart and make good headway before we followed. These breaks gave me a chance to do more shooting of my own , as well as enjoying a little banter with Joe, Bob and Martin.

From left, Bob, Martin, Chris Walton and Joe chat while awaiting departure from the boathouse terminus.

As if the tramway weren’t attraction enough, the boathouse — formally the Lakeside Cafe — is another one of the many features which make the 600-acre park so interesting. Overlooking the 12-acre, manmade lake, I was surprised to find the cafe not just open but bustling on a dreary January Sunday. It was a great place to warm up with tea and an Eccles cake as I walked from Heaton Park Metrolink station into the park toward the tramway. (And if you’ve never had an Eccles cake, that’s your loss. Lovely things; look them up. ) This is to say nothing of the many landmarks I didn’t get to see, including majestic Heaton Hall, with its orangery. For more information on the park, visit its website.

My last view of the tramway before strolling away toward Bowker Vale Metrolink station. I believe that's Lee Shaw minding the rope. Cheers, mates!

My pleasant afternoon in the park ended all too soon. After a few more round-trips as a passenger and a visit to the gift shop, it was time to step off 623 and amble through the park gates. I clumsily fired off a few more shots as the green and cream streamliner quietly rumbled away from the gates, still not quite processing all that had taken place as I briskly walked down Middleton Road toward the Bowker Vale Metrolink station in the gathering dusk. From there it was back to the mighty Manchester Piccadilly railway station and a two-seat train journey into the heart of England once again.

Thanks, lads. I needed a day like that more than you can ever know.

Intense morning sun bathes Nottingham tram 208 (Mavis Worthington) as it stops at The Forest on a Phoenix Park service.

The contrast was remarkable. After Friday’s oppressive rain and cold in Sheffield, Saturday brought clear skies and sun for my visit to the British burgh unfortunately dubbed “Shottingham.”

I say unfortunate because whatever issues with crime and violence this city may have had in recent years (and I gather they were largely confined to certain housing estates and not citywide), its public face seems to be anything but thuggish and violent. Indeed, the central city is clean and vibrant and on a Saturday was teeming with shoppers, visitors and young people.  I would go so far as to say Nottingham had a warm, cosmopolitan vibe which transcended its actual size (306,700 est. as of 2010, according to *cough, cough* Wikipedia). I definitely hope to return.

A pair of Incentro trams glide past one another on the tight curve near Wilkinson Street.

Naturally, the primary draw was Nottingham Express Transit, the city’s sleek tram system, opened in 2004. Until someone else (Edinburgh?) comes on line it remains Britain’s newest tramway system. It has been acclaimed by many observers as a true transport success story, and a new £570m extension is finally moving ahead, set for completion in 2014 according to this BBC report. To be fair, not all locals are pleased, as this BBC report suggests.

Hucknall-bound 201 between Basford and Wilkinson Street is about to make the transition from street running to private right-of-way.

From a railfan’s perspective, the system is efficient and clean and a great deal of fun. The existing tramway runs from the railway station to Hucknall, with a branch to Phoenix Park. I visited with fellow enthusiast Jack Gordon, who served as a great tour guide. We spent a little time off the rails, so I could explore the city centre and the area around Nottingham Castle. But mostly it was a day spent riding and photographing the trams. The system incorporates substantial street running and some high-speed private rights-of-way, together with such anomalies as interlaced track and one-way street operation where the line splits in two through an area of dense terraced housing. Combined with some alluring scenery, this is a tramway to be seen for true enthusiasts visiting England. Nottingham is just over an hour from London St. Pancras by train.

D.H. Lawrence's tram, car 202, awaits an early-evening departure from Phoenix Park on a city-bound service.

Like Sheffield, Nottingham still uses conductors — a fun throwback that seems eminently practical for keeping tabs on fare evasion while adding that extra sense of security, when needed. I understand the conductors are to be phased out. Let’s see how that works.

A fun quirk is that all of the system’s AT 6/5 Incentro trams are named for some notable local personage, a list of which can be found here. So yes, there really is a streetcar named Lord Byron. So, too, for Robin Hood and legendary football manager Brian Clough — to whom a substantial shelf display was dedicated at the Waterstone’s bookshop in central Nottingham.

Which named vehicle most caught my eye? That was car 202, dedicated to D.H. Lawrence. I may now say that I have ridden Lady Chatterley’s tram.

So there.

Fort Macquarie tram depot, 1940s.

Happy new year, folks.

I really should have posted this WordPress year-in-review report sooner, but better late than never. I especially like that they use the Sydney Opera House as reference point for putting the traffic in context — yes, as in the entertainment venue which sits on the site of the former Fort Macquarie tram depot, which you can read about here and here and here.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 13,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

According to BBC Scotland, A United Nations committee will scrutinise Edinburgh City Council’s handling of the controversial project, with a hearing in Geneva before the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee. The case was brought by campaigners who believe the tram scheme has resulted in an increase in pollution as construction diverts traffic into residential areas.

According to BBC, the convention was designed to give the public a stronger voice on environmental matters. Compliance committee findings “are not binding but are highly influential.”

Against the background of continuing controversy comes news of a more practical development, namely the commencement of tram testing at Gogar depot. With five of 27 trams on hand from Spain, BBC say, testing of the vehicles at speeds of about 30 mph have gotten under way over 500 metres of track.

For more on the tram testing, see:

• Herald Scotland: “Picture you thought you’d never see …” 13 Dec. 2011
• Press Association: “Trial run for trams in Edinburgh.”
• STV: “Five hundred metre Edinburgh tram trial complete,” 12 Dec. 2011

Flickr user kh1234567890 snapped this shot of Victoria-bound tram 3005 on 9 September 2011 using a Super-Paragon 300mm f5.6 mirror lens. Photo used via Creative Commons license. Click for photostream.

I’m a few days late in posting this, but here we go again.

According to this 9 December report in the Manchester Evening news, “the opening of the next phase of the £1.4bn ‘big bang’ Metrolink expansion looks set to be delayed by a troublesome computer system.”

Yes, that would be the Tram Management System, or TMS. It is designed to map the position of every tram and automatically control points and signals. And it’s the same system which caused major disruption during trials at MediaCity last September, while separate problems also delayed the Chorlton extension, according to MEN. For more on this story, see this BBC report.

Computer glitches aside, this recent Clive Kessell piece for The Rail Engineer gives a broad overview of developments since Metrolink opened nearly 20 years ago.

This forthcoming Bachmann model represents Birkenhead heritage tram 70. Thanks go to modeler and tram enthusiast Paul Derrick for providing this official Bachmann image.

Model-makers Bachmann have released images of their forthcoming OO Birkenhead heritage trams, which like the prototypes are based on Hong Kong originals. They reportedly are due out in March or April 2012, but there has been some buzz in the UK after specimens recently were displayed at the Warley National Model Railway Exhibition, including this thread in RM Web.co.uk’s tramways forum.

These new models represent an interesting variation on a longstanding Bachmann approach to producing model trams: Take one casting and paint it in as many liveries as possible, whether prototypical or not. The purists may rail against such an approach but clearly it makes economic sense, as generations of modelers have purchased Bachmann trolleys in all their forms. Witness the popularity of the firm’s omnipresent Brill and PCC models, as well as their newer Peter Witt cars — the latter based on a unique design which ran only in Baltimore yet successfully sold by Bachmann painted in the colours of many other cities. (N.B., I received my first HO Bachmann Brill as a gift way back in 1984. It still works.)

Here is Bachmann's representation of Birkenhead 69, again an official photo forwarded to me by Paul.

Here, with minimal modifications, we see Bachmann’s successful new Hong Kong cars adapted for sale in Britain, in entirely appropriate paint schemes representing the two cars built in Hong Kong for heritage operation in Birkenhead. It is a true example of art imitating life — unlike, say, a model of a Baltimore Peter Witt car in Toronto livery. The two Birkenhead cars are illustrated and described in this post on the Trams of Hong Kong (香港電車) blog.

The firm also says it will offer two undecorated cars for the British market, in plain red and blue paint. According to Bachmann’s UK website, the new offerings will be:

CE00607 — Tram Car Blue (£62.10 RRP)
CE00608 — Tram Car Red (£62.10 RRP)
CE00609 — Tram 69 Birkenhead Corporation Tramways (£66.55 RRP)
CE00610 — Tram 70 Birkenhead Corporation Tramways (£66.55 RRP)

Cheers to Bachmann for finding a prototype which can represent actual vehicles on two continents, thereby tapping into the lucrative Chinese market as well as opening the door to something so many of us have been longing for, namely a quality ready-to-run British tram at a reasonable price.

This begs the question of what they will do next. Clearly, the number of special liveries and all-over advertising paint schemes give the firm an opportunity to produce a large number of Hong Kong cars. But what will they do in Britain? There really aren’t any other British paint schemes in which to appropriately paint the Hong Kong cars, and the hope of many modelers is that Bachmann will adapt the mechanism and techniques developed for these models for production of vehicles based on true UK prototypes.

One of my British models: A Corgi Blackpool Balloon tram motorised using the mechanism not from a tram, but from a Bachmann locomotive. I imported the kitbashed car from a UK ebay seller. It is seen logging some rare mileage on the New York Museum of Transportation's HO railroad layout.

Modelers of British trams have spent years hacking up Bachmann’s Brill and PCC trolleys to install their mechanisms inside other firms’ bodies, notably in the case of Corgi’s wide range of die cast Blackpool trams as well as their London, Leeds and Sunderland Feltham cars. Such kitbashing, together with small-run production of distinctive British cars, has been the standard for British tram modelers over the years, resulting in some impressive specimens. Still, not all modelers have the skills or desire to build their own cars, and look longingly at their railway-enthusiast comrades who can buy highly realistic off-the-shelf rolling stock representing everything from vintage steam to models of contemporary British railway equipment in complex corporate liveries.

I believe there is a vast, untapped market for British tram models of similar quality, as witnessed by the diverse collection of UK tramway enthusiasts of all ages — many of whom are not even old enough to remember when trolley wires were festooned over the streets of Britain.

As the Gazette reports, Blackpool Transport had told Lancastrian Transport Trust to move 13 vintage trams out of Rigby Road depot by the end of the month or face seeing them scrapped.

Blackpool Councillor Tony Williams, deputy leader of council’s Conservative group, proposed the motion to stop the trams from being sold off.

“I’m asking you to support the heritage of Blackpool, because the threat of scrapping trams is unforgivable,” Mr. Williams said.

While his motion underwent amendments to his motion, the happy news is that it appears the trams will remain at Rigby Road depot for another 12 months, council leader Simon Blackburn said.

There were a number of interesting, thoughtful and plain amusing comments from readers on this Gazette story.

One said “the shiny new boxes we are getting like you can see in several cities are for designed for commuters” and thus “they are the wrong ones for Blackpool.”

In classic colloquial fashion was this riposte: “May I remind everybody them trams are !!!!! BLACKPOOL !!!!!!”

In other news, my recent post about the possibility of Toronto streetcars coming to Blackpool (or more precisely, Fleetwood) under another tram preservation scheme has been answered in the negative. While I have not been in contact with members of the organisation, a journalist with knowledge of the situation assured me that there are no plans to bring Canadian cars to the Fylde Coast.

Alas.