Manchester Metrolink were hit by another attempted cable theft on Wednesday 20th June which caused major disruption for passengers on the Bury line. The vandals attempted to steal the overhead wire between Heaton Park and Bowker Vale early in the morning which led to severe morning rush hour disruption.
Approximately one kilometre of overhead wire was affected by the attempted theft and because of the length of the damage it took engineers from Metrolink most of the day to repair, reinstall and recalibrate it. During the disruption trams were able to run between Bury and Whitefield and from Crumpsall to Piccadilly with the gap between Whitefield and Crumpsall bridged by a replacement bus service. In addition Metrolink tickets were
accepted on the 98 and 135 bus services.
Philip Purdy, TfGM’s Metrolink Director, said: “I’m sorry our passengers have had their journeys disrupted this morning following an attempted cable theft on the Bury line. We’ll provide buses instead of trams for as long as the repair takes and we’ve got extra staff out
on the network to help passengers find their connections. Our technicians will carry out the work as quickly as possible, but unfortunately problems of this nature do take time to repair. I’m grateful for people’s patience this morning and I’d ask them to bear with us a while longer until the repair’s complete.”
The repairs were completed by early evening on the same day with services back up and running fully by 1800, but not before many commuters and other travellers had been adversely affected for nearly 12 hours. Sadly this was not the first time would be cable thieves have caused issues for Metrolink and it is incredibly unlikely it will be the last.