Do the old trams still run in Blackpool?

So old and new Blackpool trams now operate side by side. Many of these original trams are over 80 years old and have been retained and superbly renovated. It's a unique experience – nowhere else in the UK can you still ride a Heritage Tram on the line for which it was originally built.



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In Britain, the Volk's Electric Railway was opened in 1883 in Brighton. This two kilometer line, re-gauged to 2 feet 9 inches (840 mm) in 1884, remains in service to this day, and is the oldest operating electric tramway in the world.

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An extensive tram network covered large parts of London for several decades during the first half of the twentieth century. By the 1950s, however, trams were seen as old fashioned and were gradually phased out to create more room for buses and cars.

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The North American English use of the term trolley instead of tram for a street railway vehicle derives from the work that Sprague did in Richmond and quickly spread elsewhere. Los Angeles built the largest electric tramway system in the world, which grew to over 1600 km of track.

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There was also a strong financial reason why London Transport wanted to scrap the trams. It was alleged that the trams were losing about one million pounds per annum, and that both vehicles and track were worn out. The cost of replacement and renewal would be great.

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But the trams had become a political football (in Leeds it was Labour that did for them, in Liverpool it was the Conservatives). They were unwanted clutter from the past at a time when operating costs of public transport networks were rising and meeting housing targets was the big priority for investment.

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