How Are Double Deck Trams Transported to Crich?

[whhistle]

Was at Crich this past weekend and wondered how the Blackpool tram (and others I suppose) were transported there?
Is it just a case of sticking it on a low loader and picking a route that has no bridges?
Or was it separated and taken in two halves?

 

[TC60054]

Yep, on the back of a low loader, still as a double decker. Scotts, who we use for the transport, are very experienced with moving tramcars around, and so try to avoid routes with very low trees and, obviously, low bridges.

It's to do with protecting the front and the roofs of the trams with regards to the trees, and is generally why the single deckers go visiting places moreso than enclosed double deckers.

 

[whhistle]

Thank you

 

[edwin_m]

I seem to remember reading somewhere that a few windows were broken on a tram en route to or from Crich because the trees had grown a bit since the previous tram move. Having said that, the roads around Crich are incredibly tight and I have the utmost respect for the hauliers who manage to transport something that big in one piece!

It's interesting to observe that when tramways were disappearing wholesale immediately after WW2 the tramway preservationists picked a former mineral railway about as far from an urban area as it's possible to get in central England. If Beeching had happened before the large-scale tramway abolitions then I expect they would have been spoilt for choice of disused railways and ended up somewhere much more urban - and more easily accessible for tram deliveries!

 

[Greetlander]

There was a Blackpool tram book in the 1980s that showed a Blackpool balloon car on the back of a low loader, making its way through the outskirts of Huddersfield. Can't imagine the Northern hills are the easiest things to drive a truck up with a double-deck tram on the back.