THE Festiniog and Welsh Highland Railways have landed an engineering contract to restore a Blackpool tram for the National Tramway Museum.

The Museum, based at Crich in Derbyshire, went out to tender for the construction of a new underframe for the tram and the Porthmadog based railways were selected as the preferred supplier.

Paul Lewin, Director and General Manager of The Festiniog and Welsh Highland Railways, said: “We are delighted to work with the National Tramway Museum on this project and to be associated with another heritage organisation

“During the current pandemic, it provides a great opportunity to keep our skilled team fully occupied in the coming months. It is always a pleasure to work with the highly committed team at Crich.”

Peter Whiteley, Project Leader at Crich said: “One of the main reasons we chose The Festiniog and Welsh Highland Railway to help with this restoration is the underframe has a lot of rivets in it, and specialist skills are required for both riveted and welded fabrications.

“In addition, the drawing and steel sections are in imperial measures, and we needed a company which could convert the sections to metric, without loss of structural integrity, but still meet the requirements of fitting an imperial dimensioned wooden body frame to it.

“It also ‘felt right’ awarding the work to a fellow heritage operator in these difficult times with Covid 19”.

The Welsh Highland Railway runs between Caernarfon and Porthmadog, and the Festiniog between Porthmadog and Blaenau Ffestiniog.

The National Tramway Museum contains more than 60 trams built between 1873 and 1982 and is set within a recreated period village containing a working pub, cafe, old-style sweetshop and tram depots.