Seaton Tramway teams up with Railcam to launch live webcam

SEATON Tramway, one of East Devon's most popular tourist attractions, has teamed up with Railcam to provide the service with its first heritage tramway camera.

Railcam operates a network of railway-themed live streaming cameras watched by rail enthusiasts across the country.

Heritage railway cameras have always been a very popular side to Railcam, with locations covered including Swanage Railway, West Somerset Railway and more recently the Ffestiniog & Welsh Highland Railway, covering both standard and narrow gauges.

But one thing was missing - a heritage tramway camera.

Now Railcam has teamed up with Seaton Tramway, which operates a three-mile journey through East Devon's Axe Valley, between Seaton, the village of Colyford, and the ancient town of Colyton.

The tramway operates over part of the former Seaton Branch Line, which closed in March 1966.

The tramway was established in 1970 by Claude Lane, founder of Modern Electric Tramways Ltd, which had previously operated in Eastbourne between 1954 and 1969.

Fourteen tramcars are part of the attraction, which sees about 80,000 visitors per year.

All of the tramcars are based on classic British designs, and vary in size between half-scale and two thirds-scale.

Most were built from scratch by Claude Lane and/or his successor Allan Gardner, but three were rebuilt from full- size cars which originally ran in London, Bournemouth and Exeter.

The railcar camera is situated on the depot and overlooks the Riverside Halt, with the beautiful River Axe estuary as a backdrop.

This provides a truly stunning vantage point, which covers trams starting and finishing their days work in the depot yard, services to and from Seaton station, passing loop and tides coming and going in the River Axe in the background.

Josh Castree, marketing manager and project officer at Seaton Tramway, added: "We are really excited to launch our first ever public webcam in partnership with RailCam. It is the perfect addition to our offer to make Seaton Tramway more accessible onsite and online.

"Overlooking the depot yard and our new Riverside Halt with the backdrop of the beautiful Axe Valley, we know people will love getting a little more behind the scenes at Seaton Tramway."

The camera will go live on Monday, April 5 which should see plenty of driver refreshment activity in the lead up to the return of visitors on Monday, April 12.

The camera will be available to all Railcam members on the Railcam website and YouTube page as well as the Seaton Tramway webcam page.

For more details visit www.tram.co.uk