All the way from the very local and brilliant Crich Tramway Village, we are delighted to welcome London County Council no.1, otherwise known as ‘Bluebird’ into our workshop for a complete overhaul.

The overhaul, which we expect to take 4-6 weeks will see us completely re-engineer and reconstruct the tramcar to full operational and (better than) original specification.

We have a great track record (can you see what I did there?) in rail based transport projects and our Snowdon Mountain railway redesign and rebuild is still delivering thousands of passengers per day, the easy way, to the top of Snowdon to the Ray Hole designed Snowdon Summit Centre. You can see it running on this video.

One of the first gems on LCC1 is the beautiful panel with the original badging and London County Council Crest. This crest was introduced in 1914.

From reading into the background, the blue and silver waves were designed to represent the River Thames and the Port of London. The English lion on a St George’s cross was to show that London was the “Royal centre of England”, and encompassed the capital city of England. The gold mural crown indicated that the arms were those of a municipal body.

As the arms included the English lion which was part of the royal arms, a royal warrant was issued on 29 July 1914. It was superseded (by a less attractive design) In 1953 when the county council adopted a simplified version of the arms.

This crest on the panel was uncovered by the team at Crich (very slowly and by hand by all accounts!). This was on a panel that was in appalling condition and one of our first jobs was to ensure that it will be safe and visible for generations to come.