News

Sunday 31st of October will be the last day of public passenger service for 2021

The last tram will be at 16:30 from Lakeside terminus.

For those planning a visit, please be aware of our current operational plan.

Both Middleton Road depot (Shop, Museum & Works) & Lakeside Depot are currently closed to the public to allow completion of upgrade works making them unsafe to the public.

On our current operating days of Saturday & Sunday 12-5, Our current service pattern is on and half past the hour from Lakeside only, all passengers will then need to disembark at Lakeside in order to allow the service tram to be cleaned.

If you have any queries about this please contact info@hptramway.co.uk

Please note these details are subject to the weather & volunteer availability.

Our works car is currently in need of very expensive repairs to its motors, wiring and bodywork but this comes at a cost. We need to raise £15’000 to get it running again.

If you can help please visit https://gofund.me/4f54de37 and donate whatever you can.

The Manchester Transport Museum Society (Heaton Park Tramway) receives The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, The Manchester Transport Museum Society, a group of volunteers based in Heaton Park, Manchester have been honored with The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, the highest award a voluntary group can receive in the UK. The Manchester Transport Museum Society is one of 241 charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups to receive the prestigious award this year. The number of nominations remains high year on year, showing that the voluntary sector is thriving and full of innovative ideas to make life better for those around them. The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service aims to recognize outstanding work by volunteer groups to benefit their local communities. It was created in 2002 to celebrate The Queen’s Golden Jubilee. Recipients are announced each year on 2nd June, the anniversary of The Queen’s Coronation. Award winners this year are wonderfully diverse. They include volunteer groups from across the UK, including an inclusive tennis club in Lincolnshire; a children’s bereavement charity in London; a support group those living with dementia and their carers in North Yorkshire; a volunteer minibus service in Cumbria; a group supporting young people in Belfast; a community radio station in Inverness and a mountain rescue team in Powys .Representatives of The Manchester Transport Museum Society will receive the award crystal and certificate from Sir Warren Smith, Lord-Lieutenant of Greater Manchester later this summer. Furthermore two volunteers from the Society will attend a garden party at Buckingham Palace in May 2022 (depending on restrictions at the time), along with other recipients of this year’s Award Philip Heywood, MTMS Chairman, said “The Society is delighted that our contribution to the life of Heaton Park and to the preservation of Manchester’s ongoing tramway heritage has been recognized, and wishes to pay tribute to the hard work and commitment of our volunteers in contributing to the life of our Manchester community. The award is great recognition for a team that although it always works hard, has worked harder than ever over these last 12 months.”

For a great selection of second hand books and tramway memorabilia at very reasonable prices why not take a look at https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/heatonparktramway snag yourself a bargain and support us at the same time.

Just when you thought we weren’t going to operate at all this year! We are delighted to announce…… WE’RE RUNNING FOR LIGHTOPIA! Once the current Lockdown is over and Lightopia recommences we are delighted to say we will be supporting by operating our trams again. Joining our operating fleet for Lightopia this year will be our open topper Stockport 5.  

It is with huge sadness that the Manchester Transport Museum Society announces the death of our long standing Deputy Chairman Derek Shepherd today the 1st of November.Born in Bolton on the 12th of November 1930 he died after a short illness, just two weeks before his 90th birthday, an event he had been so looking forward to.Derek lived a long, full and packed life, one that would take so long to chart to do true justice to, so we offer this as a flavour of our friend and mentor. Others I’m sure will know more of Derek from other sides of his family and Church lives and will wish to offer their own thoughts and thanks, while we offer our condolences to his family and friends. A Tramwayman through and through, his connections with his beloved trams in his home town led to him starting to help out with the Tramways Department in Bolton during the dark days of the Second World War, along with friend Alan Ralphs both then teenagers. By the end of the war, these chores including shunting trams around the shed and even driving trams up into the town centre when the need arose. Something unthinkable in todays world, but clearly they did what was needed when the times required it. His first job was as a Trolley Boy on the trams, duties he indeed carried out on the towns last tram in service on 29th of March 1947, surely one of the very last young men to fulfil that role on Britain’s tramways. This gave him an active career on the tramways of the area lasting 75 years, an amazing feat. After further studies and National Service, a long career in the electricity generating industry saw him retire as the Power Station Manager for Kearsley Power Station, which of course had its own internal electric railway and where various trams were seen to run ‘on test’ in later years. A member of the local tramway pressure group from a young age, something that saw him attending meetings in the Briton’s Protection pub in Manchester during the war – by tram of course, as far as was still possible. He went on to be an early member of the Tramway Museum Society at the National Tramway Museum in Crich, only not being a founder member as he was in Germany on National Service at the time, and a founder member of the local MTMS and was in the thick of both societies efforts to set up their respective museums over the following decades. However the need to have a preserved Bolton tram was too strong and led him along with a small group of others to seek out one of the remaining tram bodies from a local farm. Over the following 18 years it was restored to its former glory, before arriving in Blackpool on 23rd July 1981, where it has run with great success ever since – a testament to his and the rest of the team’s hard work and dedication. Not one to sit back having done that, he was active in many other local museums such as Science and Industry Museum in Manchester with the National Electricity Gallery and was at the heart of the various tramway projects around the centenary of Blackpool’s tramways in 1985. Indeed many of the visiting trams that ran there that year did so with his help. This was something that led to him being honored as President of the TMS the following year in recognition for that work. It also led on to the creation of the Bolton Trams Company, set up to carry out further tramcar rebuilds from 1987 until 2002. With us within Heaton Park, he was always there, driving us forward, planning the next development of the tramway and having the vision for where the society should be heading, to keep us growing. A dedicated husband to Julie, father to his 5 children and a grandfather to 8 and great grandfather of 2 he was also a lifelong committed Christian. These things ran deep through his life and led to his fatherly hand on all of us he helped to develop a love of tramways. A great mentor for those willing to listen to his deep fund of knowledge, fascinating tales of times past and wealth of experience from having been there, done that and getting the job done, both to keep the trams running and the lights on in homes and industry, in what feels like another world to us now.

Thank you Derek for so very very much Ding Ding, Right Away Driver and Rest in Peace my friend.

Following information from the City Council and the Park Management, we have been requested to close down all activity at the tramway with immediate effect. This includes not just tramway operation, but all activities undertaken. Although the Park itself will remain open at present. Sadly this means as well as our regular operation our 40th birthday event on the last weekend of March is also postponed as is as our tram driving experiences. Anyone with a Tram Driver Experience booked for April will be contacted within the next few weeks to rebook. Well make sure to keep you all up to date, with the work we’ve been getting on with recently and when we will be reopening.

Anyone who has purchased a Tram Driver Experience is asked to email Info@HPTramway.co.uk to re-book their session for later on in the year.