15th August 2010 Wearing an all-over white base livery with "Metro" logos in anticipation of receiving an all-over advertising livery, Centenary car 648 rests on the centre loop at Bispham between duties on promenade specials. The mid-life refurbishment of Centenary car 648 was undetaken on a less drastic & more sympathetic scale than the other seven cars in the class, in mind of eventual preservation. The car retains the original East Lancashire Coachbuilders car ends, head & tail light arrangement, but has gained the roof side extensions & double glazed windows. Car 648 was the last conventional Centenary car to enter service but was actually the second car in the series to be built, having entered service as car 651 in 1985 following car 641's introduction in 1984. Car 651 was experimentally equipped with brushless DC "switched reluctance" motors & relevant controllers using "gate turn off" thyristor technology as part of the equipment. The car ran in this condition on a pair of refurbished Maley & Taunton HS44 inside frame trucks with spiral bevel drives & air brakes acting on brake drums mounted outside the wheels instead of acting on the wheel rims, the same configuration being used on the same trucks under Blackpools Coronation cars except that the Coronations used dynamic braking as the service brake, the air drum brake only being used to bring the cars to a halt. My personnal recollections of the car was a very noisey & rough acceleration but very quiet & smooth once running at line speed. Braking was rougher than cars with conventional wheel rim braking arrangements, though one instance of an elderly gentleman mistaking the red "emergency stop" button over the centre exit door for the red "next stop" call bell button located on the handrail when approaching Lowther Avenue, brought the car to such a rapid halt that forward facing passengers were almost decanted from their seats onto the floor & the motorwoman tipped off her seat. Her comments to the errant passenger as she reset the emergency button were, needless to say, explicit!!

Owls are birds of prey that have large forward-facing eyes and ear-holes; a hawk-like beak; a flat face; and usually a conspicuous circle of feathers, a facial disc, around each eye. The feathers making up this disc can be adjusted in order to sharply focus sounds that come from varying distances onto the owls' asymmetrically placed ear cavities.Although owls have binocular vision, their large eyes are fixed in their sockets — as are those of other birds — so they must turn their entire head to change views. Owls can rotate their heads and necks as much as 270 degrees in either direction.