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From what I've been told, between 4 North West depots (Vic, Picc, Blackburn and I think Wigan) there are only 8 conductors who have volunteered to sign on for duty on Xmas eve.

Yes, I work at multiple different stations across the TPE and Northern network as part of the TransPennine Route Upgrade and I deal 1st hand with these issues. They have a high turnover of coords so most of the time I'm working with people who have only done a couple of shifts on the job. Half...

Yeah Arriva Road Transport Services still do Northerns rail replacement. They're very good at sourcing coordinators....not so good at sourcing buses though

The xx15 Saltburns extremely busy, with 6 cars leaving full and standing, the xx30 Hulls have been pretty reasonable. 1699644446 Yup, and combined with the 20 - 40 min delays coming from the east and the peak time extras to Wigan, it caused carnage as it sat in platform 3 for 20 mins.

Was working at Piccadilly today, and mainly stayed on platform 1 throughout this. We were told to protect the barrier line and not let the protesters onto the platforms, and that they were expecting up to 3,500 protestors. Last time this happened, they all got on to the tracks. Wasn't too bad...

When I did my tram driver training in Blackpool, I had to hold a valid, clean drivers licence (not necessarily Cat B at first but it gets sent off to the DVLA whilst in training) and the tram was not allowed out of the depot without 'L plates' and 'driver training' on the destination display...

I agree, it would've been great to have a 7 minute Promenade service utilising the extra balloons and would've taken the pressure off the core Flexity service, but like I said there was (perhaps still is?) a major staffing issue that prevented it. They were at least 11 tram drivers short when I...

I did ask the question when I was there about the modified balloons running in passenger service. I think the issue itself may stem from the fact that only 3 - 4 drivers and no conductors at Starr Gate sign them (and there were no plans to have us trained on them due to a severe lack of staff)...

The depot rumour (a few weeks before I left) was its due to open the tail end of next year. Rumour was that there was some kind of issue with the way the cladding on the hotel was installed, thus invalidating its warranty and needing to be taken off and redone the correct way. This would mean...

As mentioned above, Western Train was first, then Trawler and finally Frigate - as seen here passing me at Talbot Square. We were held here for an hour whilst the parade was ongoing, so got to watch it all. No other heritage trams were involved, just these three.

Having 3 is a fairly regular occurance too, if a duty is double guarded all day and a jumper gets on. I think my record is 5 conductors on one tram! Two conductors (I was one of them), one in training, and two jumpers (one getting off at Pleasure Beach to head back north and the other going back...

All well and good saying should be every 10 minutes, but we're that short of staff that were struggling to run this timetable! In an ideal world, trams would be every 7 minutes on the prom 1661513978 Indeed it has, but that's just down to how desperately short of drivers we are on the LRT side...

They're generally out between 0800 and 1900 then after 1900 they just stay on the tram and go to Little Bispham/Fleetwood with it. Makes sense later on in the evening. Can be a bit annoying though like today on earlies, my conductor was on his own throughout the shift and got hammered from...

They're called jumpers. We usually have 7 or 8 out per day who just shuttle between Pleasure Beach and Bispham all day every day. Attached is a time card from when I did jumping a few weeks ago for the day to give you an example of what a jumper does in a day

Only 1 panto on the roof, hence I needed rescuing... Whilst the panto direction could possibly have some effect, if the side hooks and snags on the other overhead as it did here then the direction it was facing wouldn't make a difference.

I believe the cause was due to the heat. All I know is I lost power, looked in the cameras and saw the pantograph hanging off the side so threw the brakes in and evacuated the tram. Does this mean I've gone viral now...?

Thankfully had nothing to do with the weather though, just Tram 002 that lost its pan. I ultimately ended up being the only tram running during the disruption, just shuttling between the Cabin and Fleetwood for a couple of hours

We've been running mostly alright today... I did get a radio call around 9am asking all drivers to look out for and report any track buckling or overheads sagging, but otherwise it was normal speeds and normal service (with the exception of two trams that needed swapping due to faults)

But then how do the engineers know that something (be it the point mechanism, the PPI etc) isn't working so they can go out and fix it?

At the moment no, but again you can get away with it as for the moment it's only 1 route.