U.K. - Blackpool Trams Get New Lease on Life
 

Anyone who's been to Blackpool, Britain's numero uno seaside resort yesterday and today will no doubt have been enamoured by the trams that clank for miles along the seafront esplanade. Some are double-deckers others have unusual liveries - such as the one shaped like a boat. Yet Blackpool trams were threatened with screeching to a halt due to lack of funds forthcoming from the government's regional funding, needed to support the system. For months the government had balked at committing needed funds to keep the system afloat but in July it decided to give nearly 12 million pounds for emergency repairs to the tattered system, where between Pleasure Beach and Manchester Square trams were reuced to crawling at no more than 4 mph due to shoddy track condition. Without the emergency funds it was doubtful that the trams could have continued running during the winter season - The Blackpool Lights, is a trip the lights fantastic light show that draw huge crowds Aug thru Nov - and the Lights without the equally lighted up and decorated trams would be hard to imagine.

But Blackpuddlian (?? like Liverpuddlian) authorities say 88 million pounds is needed for a full rehab of the historic tramway to insure its running for at least the next few years.

Oh Blackpool - never seen such a place and i drop in here for some real English culture anytime i can!

Blackpudlian is correct.

So our taxes are paying for this nonsense? Heaven forbid all those landladies - Thatcherites to a harridan - who've been raking it in all these years might actually stand on their own bloody feet for a change and fork out some of their own cash to keep their businesses alive.

Blackpool has more hotel rooms than Portugal. That's always staggered me. That and the fact that Blackpool turned gay.

Historic tramway indeed. England's first electric tramway and the only one to survive the system-wide cull of the 1950's and 60's.
Ah, to take a Toastrack to Squires Gate or a Pantograph car to Bispham.

<Heaven forbid all those landladies - Thatcherites to a harridan>

Flanneruk - get up to date like a est f - last few times i've stayed in a Blackpool B&B it was a landlord or landlords as the case with my last one, Chris & George - not sure these gay lords are Thatcherites to a harridan. And you'd better believe the Iron Lady would not fork out a farthing for those Blackpool trams, historic or not! To wit the sad condition still of U.K. rail infrastructure, still suffering from Thatcherite benign neglect.

And flanner: i'm dismayed by your lack of willingness to fund the Blackpool trams as a national treasure - to me no less important than the National Gallery, British Museum and a 1000 other projects now i believe in part funded with tax moneys and the lottery proceeds.

Perhaps you oppose all such taxation for any cultural institution, then OK but if you discriminate against the Blackpool trams as 'nonsense' then you push a cultural hegemony of the upper class types whose view of cultural patrimony is mainly art museums and the like.

And they are actually rolling out and currently testing brand new trams for Blackpudlians and others to hop - the money needed is for trackwork - the trams are just fine i guess.