Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Leeds

Leeds 399 and Leeds 180 - Boring!
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5 comments:

  1. Anonymous4/10/07 00:12

    I can see your point of how two cars from the same city can be seen as boring. Mainly due to the fact we have many trams and a bit of diversity wouldn't go amiss

    However lets not forget however that 399 and 180 are completely different trams, 399 was designed as a wooden seated 'traditional' tram in an era where any kind of competition was from either very early buses or horse vehicles.
    180 on the other hand was designed to compete with the modern motor bus of the 1930's (Leyland TD's and early AEC Regents to name two) thus making it completely different in both comfort and design to 399. It basically shows an evolution of the tram in one particular city

    There are of course other issues - what was the weather and what was avalible? What could be driven that was appropriate for the day

    It should be the duty of the staff on the day to point out why 180 is different to 399 thus pointing out why trams needed to evolve in the 30's, something i would certainly do in such a situation

    There is also the consideration that many of our operational trams are from Leeds due to the late closure of that system (we got more trams from them compared to places like London, Nottingham and Derby)

    It isn't boring providing its interpreted well by the crews, it is actully quite an intresting period to talk to the visitors about!

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  2. Anonymous4/10/07 20:25

    I have to second Nick in saying that running two Leeds trams together is far from boring. The two trams are very different, as he points out, and the crews should be pointing those differences out to our visitors. Also, patronising as it may seem, the fact that one is red and the other yellow, brown & white is sufficient difference for many of our our clientele. If we'd run blue & white Leeds 345, that would have looked different too!

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  3. Anonymous8/10/07 21:03

    If it is so boring why waste disk space and publish it in the first place?
    Having said that I agree with both Nick and Adrian. Braking systems are different, current collectors are different, colours are different - need one say more? Far from boring in my opinion!

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  4. The Heritage Lottery Fund clearly do not think 399 boring. A photograph of this tram travelling past the workshop extension was a prominent feature on their website for many months. The trams look very different and are indeed of different designs, may I be so bold as to suggest that you just have an unreasoned prejudice against things from Leeds....?

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  5. I have read all of the comments and agree with nick and adrian. As for saying it's boring, i think thats wrong phrase as it might put off pottntinal visitors as they look at your site to see how good Crich is. You could say every day is boring cause we some times have all Glasgow, Sheffield or Blackpool trams out and even all the same style of tram like 22,60 and 7 or 106, 45 and 68.

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