A Blackpool Millennium Tram

So the backbone of Blackpool's tram network for a very long time was the Balloon tram car, a large unit built in 1934 and highly successful. Naturally in 1998 Blackpool, firmly in the grips of being completely unable to tell whether they were a heritage tramline or a modern LRV system, decided to modernise 4 Balloon cars. The results were predictable. Tourists hated them because they were, on a surface level, at least trying to be modern trams and so not the historical curiosity the Blackpool tramway is whilst passengers hated them as they were still fundamentally Balloon Cara and so you could feel it in the ride quality and reliability problems. Blackpool still retains a few Balloons in operational capacity in case one of their Flexity trams fails or if additional capacity is needed, though the Millennium cars remain unpopular.