1977 Photographic Album No.3 - Along The Prom

The third article made up of photos from a recently unearthed photo album. All the photographs were taken of Blackpool in 1977. This was the Silver Jubilee year of Queen Elizabeth II and a time of exciting changes in Blackpool some of which are illustrated here.

Not all of the photos were taken on the same day. There's about 60 photos in the album. In 1977 there was no such thing as a digital camera, almost no such thing as a digital anything. Home computers were still a few years off and whilst there may have been the first few digital display watches coming out, anyone who answered "16:05" in response to being asked the time was probably looked at scathingly whilst saying "What's that in proper time?"

So these photos were taken on colour negative film. Technicolor film was a favourite of mine at the time, though I also used Kodacolor every now and then, or Fuji or other obscure brands like Barfen or Orwo which could be bought in bulk lengths through the photographic press and had to be loaded into cassettes in total darkness before being used in the camera. Bought films came in lengths for 12, 24 or 36 photographs and once exposed, films had to be taken to the local camera shop, chemist or the few specialist developing houses for the film to be developed and photos to be printed on special paper. The alternative was doing it yourself in a darkroom which for colour prints was a very fiddly business with some quite nasty chemicals.

The first photo today was obviously taken on quite a breezy day. The flags are flying well off the tethering ropes of the flag pole to the left of the Tower whose own flags, placed there for the Silver Jubilee, plus the excess material of people's seventies flared trousers are all showing the direction of the wind blowing off the Irish Sea!

Above the Promenade, the strings of sockets are waiting for the illumination bulbs to be fitted and over the roadway on the right the illuminations show a Chinese theme.

This looks as though it was taken on a brighter day! It shows a gang of workmen from the Corporation putting up the illuminations we saw in the previous photo. 1977 marked a bit of a changeover period for the illuminations. It was in the middle of several years in which the illuminations on lampposts along the roadway changed from these wooden flats, painted with designs that were then lit by coloured bulbs. Some of the bulbs were painted matt black on the outer part of the bulb so that viewers saw the lit board underneath rather than the glare of the bulbs themselves.

The extending lift of the Corporation wagon looks rather primitive by today's standards. One side of the lamppost has been fitted with its flat and the other lies on the ground. The lorry operative, dressed in overalls is scratching his head in conversation with someone hidden behind him, but the two men up on the gantry have seen me and are posing happily for their picture to be taken.

On the other side of the road in front of the wagon is the bright orange sign of the New Yorker Cafeteria. I have fond memories of sitting in it in the mid sixties, sipping scalding milky coffee (latte? What on earth is that???) out of clear glass Pyrex cups that sat on matching clear glass saucers whilst listening to The Beatles Yellow Submarine on the jukebox!

A little further along the Prom, we approach the Central Pier. A double deck "balloon" tram heads north up the track, closely followed by tramcar No.1 - a new-fangled tram adapted from the Brush railcoach tramcars and given extensions at each end so that they can be run as a One-Man-Only operation. The driver no longer has a cabin to himself, but is sitting as a bus driver would, with a ticket machine taking fares as people enter the tramcar. This leads to conductors losing jobs and also hold-ups along the line, as each tram has to stop longer for the driver to take fares. Due to the strange configuration of the ends of the tram, they came to be known as "coffin-trams".

The coffin tram here is rolling over the junction of the emergency line running down from Princess Street. This street was the first in the world to have an electric tram roll down it in 1885 but was in use only as an emergency route to the Promenade in case of a fire in the tram depot. Because there is a gap in the pavement for the trams, a sign warns car drivers that unauthorised vehicles must not be used or parked on the foreshore.

Looking to the right for a moment we can now see some of the new illuminations - a set showing puppies - made of fibreglass with the light bulbs housed internally and lighting the display from within.

Further up the Promenade again, to take this photo I am standing on the pedestrian bridge over the seafront roadway between New Bonny Street and Adelaide Street West. The trams are at the Tower tram stop where the line branches off to a third line. Trams for the Tower only stop on the middle line, one of whose passengers are disembarking in the photo. They then have their poles reversed here and then cross over to the southward line. At the bottom of the photo a tramway official is taking down the long hooked pole used to grab the tram pole which is pulled down off the line, often with a satisfying crackle of sparks and then swung round as the operator walks round the tram to position the pole under the line at the other end of the tram and slowly ease it upwards until it sits correctly on the line.

A Fleetwood-bound tram has swung into the branch on the left to continue its journey northwards. Further up the line a young man has cheekily tried to dart in front of the southwards coffin tram. The driver has sounded its hooter, causing the young man to take a spectacular flying leap to get out of the way. For most other towns in the UK, trams have not been seen on the road for over twenty years and visitors to Blackpool sometimes act as though they expect the trams to be able to swerve round them!

On the right hand side the illuminations at this point are the old-fashioned flats and are a series featuring steam locomotives. The bulbs along the streams of smoke from the funnels are controlled by elaborate banks of relays and flash on and off in sequence to give the illusion of smoke coming out of the funnel and along the top of the train. Very effective and in the absence of computers and gaming machines, they instil a sense of wonder in children who see them.

Taken from the bottom of the pedestrian bridge (it can just be glimpsed overhead in the top left corner) we see the girder framework of a new building on the Golden Mile. A sign tells us that it will be called Coral Island and that it is scheduled to be opened in May 1978. Locals tut over the size of it, as most amusement arcades along the Golden Mile at this point in time are nowhere near as big as this is going to be. Others are still sighing as they look at the site, remembering the heydays of Blackpool Central Railway Station which occupied the rear of this site until its closure and demolition.

We are close to the Tower. Looking up we can see that the Tower top has been painted silver in honour of the Queen's Silver Jubilee. This brings us to the end of article No.3. In the next article we'll have a look at both sides of the Promenade, as even the side next to the beach and sea is very different to today.

Return to Blackpool Promenade and Beach Index Page

1977 Photographic Album 2 - Carnival Parade

The second set of photos from my recently unearthed photo album from 1977 show a carnival parade along Blackpool's Promenade. I think this is the Round Table's carnival but am quite happy to be corrected via comment or email! This was just about a year after we moved to Blackpool so even annual events were being seen for the first time!

These pancake-tossing lovelies are wearing t-shirts advertising the Mecca Ballroom. Situated on Central Drive this was a popular venue at the time and I'm sure just the mention of its name will stir lots of memories for people who used to go to the Mecca venues all over the country.

The "Captain" of this float, mocked up like a Mississippi paddle steamer - not a common sight off Blackpool usually... 1977 was the Queen's Silver Jubilee year so lots of floats were decked out (I can't help it...) in red, white and blue!

The float of Blackpool Transport Car Club. The Ford Escort on the back of the float would be four or five years old, the Mk.I Escort came out in 1968 and was a delight to drive, thought by many to be the first truly modern small car. It replaced the Ford Anglia and was in production for quite some time through six versions until it was replaced by the Focus in 2002.

My mind draws almost a total blank on this one. If anyone can identify the couple please let me know. I have a vague feeling they were entertainers, though at what venue I've no idea...

Strange how I seem to have chosen to point the camera primarily at pretty girls... But hey! Look at that teepee! She's laughing at the antics of her partner who was called Streaker. No... not Streaker... Running Bear! That's it!

The Fylde, as the wider region in which Blackpool sits is known, is famous for windmills. Even today you can still find at least six and there are another two "over Wyre" as the region north of the River Wyre is known.

I hope you've enjoyed this glimpse of 1977. It's rare now, just 37 years later, to find a carnival parade with floats that have had so much work devoted to them. The dreaded Health & Safety ethos of modern times has not so much directly stopped these things, but the relentless pursuit of blame and threat of legal action in case of what used to be called accidents would now make any lorry owner and driver wary of accepting a temporary structure with people standing on top of a moving vehicle. A great shame. How did we all survive such foolish and dangerous times?

Return to Blackpool Attractions Index Page

1977 Blackpool Photographic Album 1

The other day I came across an old photo album in amongst the several piles of junk in my spare room.. I don't know why I call it that, because there is no spare room at all...

Anyway it was one of those with pages with semi-sticky lines along it and a clear plastic cover over each page. The idea was that you pulled the plastic sheet back, placed your photos and then smoothed the plastic back over, which held the photos in place.

The idea was that you could always pull the plastic clear again if you wanted to reposition the photos. It was a system that worked very well. Up to a point... Almost 40 years later the plastic covering has ceased to stick to the little lines. The photos though are well and truly stuck.

The photos it holds were placed there in 1977, the year after we moved to Blackpool and the year our daughter was born. I took hundreds of photos of Blackpool that year because every single day we would find some time to take her out in the pram and up and down the Promenade or round the Pleasure Beach in those giddy days when you could wander round free of charge and ride or buy snacks at a whim.

I have a huge collection of negatives from that year, but for some reason, the ones of the photos in this album have not yet come to light. I've spent a few hours scanning the photos from the prints in the album, then trying my best to colour-correct the rather warm colour cast that is partly due to age and partly due to the original processing. There are approx 60 photos in the album, so they are not all going to appear in this one article. But over the course of a few days, we'll take a wander down the Promenade to look at a Blackpool that was very different to today.

We'll have a look at Coral Island being built. We'll have a look at the Steeplechase ride on the Pleasure Beach being built. We'll be able to look all the way up Victoria Street from the Prom and see almost the full width of the Winter Gardens entrance at the top. There will be reminders of Charlie Cairoli, old Illuminations tableaux and trams no longer with us. There will be incidental wonders amongst the cars on the road. There will be some gobsmacking hairstyles and clothes... Let's kick off with a few of the photos you caught a glimpse of above...

Following a couple of years where this ancient Dreadnought tram was displayed on the Promenade whilst the Civic Trust attempted to raise funds to restore it, the very first electric tram to be preserved deliberately rather than as a by-product of it being pressed into service as, say, a service vehicle, Dreadnought No.59 became a regular and most welcome sight on the Promenade tracks. In the top photo it runs in front of the fairly new Golden Mile Centre, the first modern purpose-built amusement arcade on the Golden Mile. Hidden by the tram is the old Victoria Hotel which is occupied by a Ripley's Believe It Or Not attraction. The distinctive Las-Vegas-style neon tower visible with the row of yellow beacons along its top was a wonderful sight at night.

In the lower photo, taken a few seconds later, the Dreadnought tram is about to pass under the pedestrian bridge over the roadway, the only one of several planned bridges to be built. It was fine on the Promenade side. On the town side it brought pedestrians to a cold and quite nasty little concrete platform by the side of nightclubs and swirling litter picked up by mini whirlwinds with an atmosphere more akin to blocks of threatening high-rise flats than to what the average holidaymaker expected and wanted. It was a brilliant vantage point to watch the trams (as we shall see later in this series) but most people walked up it from the Prom, watched the trams and came back down the same side.

The boat trams were the oldest of the 1930s tram fleet (the double decker balloon trams replaced the Dreadnoughts). These open-air trams were hugely popular with visitors and were brought out every sunny day. 1977 wasn't quite as sunny a summer as the record-breaking 1976 had been, but there were plenty of opportunities to ride on a tram and feel the wind blowing your hair! Even I still had some then...

We've arrived at the Pleasure Beach. There's still free parking along the Promenade and an unrestricted view of the Big Dipper as Ocean Boulevard has yet to be built. The Log Flume weaves its way above the old boating lake which now houses the underwater track of the Tom Sawyer rafts. Further towards the left of the photo the Space Tower can be seen, though the gondola is out of sight behind the red space-age building which housed an amusement arcade. The purple and white striped dome houses a camera obscura and the Monorail track is rather obvious as it makes its way along the front of the lake towards the northern half of the park.

On The Tram Tracks, May 1984

A few recently scanned tram photos from May 1984.

We'll start off with the spectacular 1904 Blackpool Dreadnought tram. Originally built when the trams were still powered by a conduit slot between the rails, these huge trams took large numbers of visitors up and down the Promenade with the entire end of the tram used as an entrance.

Balloon 720 heads up Lytham Road towards the sheds at the end of its shift.

1984 was the run-up to the tramway centenary in 1985. A number of trams were on loan to Blackpool being tested on the Blackpool tracks in 1984. Blackpool had also recently restored their 1953 Coronation tram, seen here in front of the landmark honeycombed front of Lewis's store.

A peek into the tramsheds on Rigby Road. On the left is a Glasgow tramcar with the Bolton tram behind it.

Return to Blackpool Tram and Bus Index Page

Tram Photos at Flickr

I've uploaded a few more tram photos to my Flickr site. (no longer active)

I know that the Blackpool trams generate quite a lot of interest on my Blackpool website (sadly also no longer active, though most content is now included on this blog) and many of you have asked for larger versions of the photos to be made available.

All the photos at my Flickr site are 800x600 unless they are portrait oriented in which case they are 600 pixels high and as wide as the format allows.

The tram pictured is the oldest electric street tram in the world - Blackpool had the very first electric street tramway in 1885 and this is the only one of the original fleet still in existence. It is running on battery power because Blackpool originally had a conduit system instead of overhead lines. Power was picked up by a third slot running between the rails. However the problems with sand from the beach being blown into it led to the installation of the overhead system which is still in operation today.