Tram Power is a

Merseyside Merseyside ( ) is a ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial and metropolitan county in North West England. It borders Lancashire to the north, Greater Manchester to the east, Cheshire to the south, the Wales, Welsh county of Flintshire across ...

-based manufacturer of

tram A tram (also known as a streetcar or trolley in Canada and the United States) is an urban rail transit in which Rolling stock, vehicles, whether individual railcars or multiple-unit trains, run on tramway tracks on urban public streets; some ...

way vehicles. It built a single prototype, called the Citytram, which was tested on the

Wirral Tramway Wirral Tramway was a heritage tramway opened in 1995 by the Wirral Borough Council and Hamilton Quarter partnership and was operated by Blackpool Transport, Blackpool Transport Services until 2005 when the council took over the licence to run th ...

and Blackpool Tramway from 2005 to 2007. The company is planning to build a tram line in

Preston, Lancashire Preston () is a city on the north bank of the River Ribble in Lancashire, England. The city is the administrative centre of the county of Lancashire and the wider City of Preston, Lancashire, City of Preston local government district. Preston ...

City Class tram

The City Class tram began life as a research paper in 1987, which addressed the question of LRV models increasing in weight and cost. A 4-tonne quarter-size mockup was built in 1993. A redundant 1930s tram in Blackpool had City Class running gear installed at one end and was tested from 1995 to 1997. A full-size 29-metre-long prototype LRV was built in parallel; it ran until 2000, when the TRAM GROUP, which had sponsored the project, ran out of money. In 2005, the prototype was rebuilt with new running gear. It was tested on the

for three months, then on the Blackpool Tramway. In November 2006, an agreement was reached for the prototype to run in passenger service until October 2007. Before this could occur, the prototype was heavily damaged by a fire during testing on 24 January 2007. A Railway Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) inquiry determined that the fire likely started in the 24-volt electrical system under the floor of the tram. No evidence was found that the driver or infrastructure contributed to the cause of the fire; the Blackpool Tramway was however rebuked for not having carried out a proper health and safety evaluation of the vehicle including a fire risk evaluation, and for not having in place proper safety management procedures for dealing with new technology. In 2008, Tram Power was one of only two bidders on replacement rolling stock for the tram (streetcar) network in the Canadian city of Toronto. Tram Power's bid was ruled to be not commercially compliant. (The other bid, from

Bombardier Transportation Bombardier Transportation was a Canadian rolling stock and rail transport manufacturer, with headquarters in Toronto and Berlin. It was one of the world's largest companies in the rail vehicle and equipment manufacturing and servicing industry. ...

, also initially failed but a revised bid the following year eventually won the contract.) , the company (as Preston Tram Power) is attempting to build a tram line in

References

External links

{{commons category, Tram Power
Official website
Locomotive manufacturers of the United Kingdom Engineering companies of the United Kingdom Train-related introductions in 2005