The first permanent electric tramway in the UK began operations in 1885. Initially the trams were restricted to offering free rides along the Promenade, and were pressed into service for transporting building materials for the Tower as well.

 Initially blighted by power failures and sensitivity to adverse weather conditions, people soon got used to seeing them reduced to the indignity of being pulled along by horses. At first the power line was located on the ground, in between the rails. As these were prone to getting clogged with sand blowing from the beach on windy days, the line was eventually repositioned overhead in 1900.

With growing popularity, new tracks were laid throughout the town. By the end of the 19th century, Blackpool was entertaining three million visitors a year. The tram system was in huge demand, and now ran from Starr Gate to the south of the town (near the Pleasure Beach fairground) to Fleetwood further up the Fylde coast – a distance of nearly 12 miles, which the network still serves today.

Fleetwood Terminus loop, 1956
©David Bradley www.cyberpictures.net/blackpool/g1.htm

Deline and revival

As in other towns and cities, the trams began losing popularity to motor bus services from the 1920s. By the 1970s, the stretch of track that covered the Blackpool coastline was the only surviving tramway in the whole country. Just as the technology looked on the brink of disappearing into history, a movement to restore tram systems as an ecologically sound means of public transport came into being, and soon Manchester, Sheffield, Croydon and others had introduced tram systems.

The Blackpool network has been restored with a fleet of new vehicles and continues to serve the coastal route from Starr Gate to the Fleetwood ferry.

An illuminated tram at Foxhall
©David Bradley www.cyberpictures.net/blackpool/g1.htm

Ghostly goings-on

If you are lucky (or should that be unlucky?) enough on a wet and stormy out-of-season night in Blackpool, you may get to hear the ghost tram. It rumbles along an apparently deserted track before stopping with a prolonged squeal of brakes.

Some say it marks the death of a retired tram driver who was run over by the tram he had just taken on one last spin. The more sceptically minded suggest that it is a sound effect caused by salt air short-circuiting the overhead power cables. To decide for yourself, you will need to choose a suitably dismal off-season night to spend in Blackpool. Form an orderly queue…