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Midland Metro tram gets traditional look to mark 60 years since Birmingham trams

A Midland Metro tram has been painted in historic colours. The final trams in Birmingham city centre ran in 1953 but will return to the city in 2015 when an extension to the Midland Metro from Snow Hill to New Street station is completed.

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To mark the 60th anniversary, Centro decided to repaint the number 11 tram in the old Birmingham Corporation colours of blue and cream.

It is named after former councillor Theresa Stewart, Birmingham's first female leader, who ran the city council between 1993 and 1999 and was Lord Mayor in 2000-01.

Councillor Stewart was also a member of the West Midlands Passenger Transport Authority and played a leading role in persuading the John Major government of the early 1990s to give the go-ahead for the tram line between Wolverhampton and Birmingham. She was invited to formally launch the rebranded tram in a ceremony at Snow Hill station, the day before her 83rd birthday.

She said: "I am delighted and very flattered to see the Metro named after me in the old corporation colours.

"It is a super system and I think despite the current disruption the extension works are causing in the centre of Birmingham at the moment, once the trams start running through its streets the more people will realise just how good it is."

Trams started running in Birmingham in 1872 when the Birmingham and District Tramways Co Ltd opened a line from the Birmingham boundary at Hockley Brook, through Handsworth and West Bromwich.

At Carter's Green, the company's depot, it then forked to serve Hill Top, south of Wednesbury, and west to Dudley Port.

The network grew in the years leading up to the First World War, and Birmingham Corporation eventually took full control of it in 1912.

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