Last of the summer wine on rails
Page 38
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AS THE Beaujolais Noveau was beginning to gush across the Channel into Britain, a rather less exotic movement was taking place in the opposite direction from Scotland to England. Aided and abetted by the Department for National Savings, Edinburgh's last tram, which ran in the city from 1948 until 1956, was being prised out of retirement to carry holidaymakers along Blackpool seafront.
Chris Miller Ltd, Preston, hauled the 62-seat doubledecker, which was withdrawn in the year when premium bonds, administered from Blackpool, were introduced. Any connection between the two events is tenuous. The tram will come into regular service next summer and will be one of several historic vehicles running during the Blackpool tramway centenary in 1985.
Nearly half the delectable Beaujolais arriving in Britain on November 15 was cleared through customs by Wood International Forwarding, part of the National Freight Consortium. Twenty-six Cotrali-Pickfords trailers travelled at the forward end of the 46-vehicle Sealink ferry from Calais to Dover for rapid unloading and clearance, and by lunchtime that day the sound of happy slurping could be heard far and wide.