Below: Well, the event is called ‘Our Friends – Electric’ and this has certainly been borne out – a team from the Merseyside Tramway Preservation Society (Mike Mercer, left), the National Tramway Museum (Andy Bailey, centre) and Beamish (Tom Dorney, right) worked alongside members of the Beamish Tramway Group to commission 730.  We also had representatives from Heaton Park here too, some of whom are involved in the tramway exhibition at the weekend.  So ‘Our Friends’ is very apt, even though we weren’t able to have a tramcar from each tramway here for the weekend.

Below: By mid afternoon 730 was on display outside the depot alongside Newcastle 114 (Benfica and Newcastle play each other at football shortly – so this is quite an interesting shot!), 730 was awaiting the close of operation in order to carry out line testing and clearance trials.

Below: 730 at the Entrance on a sunny but cold evening.  Tests were completed satisfactorily and the tram will enter service tomorrow morning, probably with 196, 31 and 114 for the start of the day.  The rest of the fleet will be displayed outside the tram depot.

Below: A couple of views showing the depot display.  31 started in service without the Circular Tour boards (my fault – I forgot to fit them!) but this was quickly corrected and I think they look very smart!

Below: Lots of trams at rest!