Manchester Metrolink services between Victoria and Piccadilly Gardens were suspended at the start of this week following a major fire alongside the tramway on Balloon Street leading to concerns about the safety of the building. The Hanover Tower, formerly the CWS building, on Corporation Street caught light on the night of Monday 12th October leading to a couple of days of disruption for Metrolink travellers.
As soon as the fire was reported services were suspended between Victoria and Piccadilly Gardens with Shudehill and Market Street stops not being served. But from the start of service the following morning it seemed everything was back to normal with a full tram service being operated. However after an inspection of the building during the afternoon it as declared unsafe and once again Tuesday 13th October ended with no services from Victoria into the city centre. It was expected that no trams would run for at least two days but after the building was made safe full services resumed once again at the start of Wednesday 14th October.
Initially according to the Metrolink website it said bury services were terminating at Abraham Moss and Rochdale services were terminating at Monsal.Was this a problem with configuration of the overhead line so they couldn’t just isolate from Victoria up Balloon street so trams could terminate at Victoria.I did notice on the website on Tuesday after they declared the building unsafe that engineers were busy working so trams could terminate at Vic.My question is that I would have thought the facility to isolate the overhead and allow trams to terminate at Vic would have been a pretty basic requirement to keep the network running to a terminal station.Of course I am no expert on these matters maybe they is a perfectly genuine reason.I did notice only the week before there was the official opening of the new Victoria station.Probably just the heavy rail side.
There is infrastructure available to isolate the Overhead in the way stated above, but this is not possible from the control, and requires engineers to manually operate the isolator on the traction pole it is located at Victoria (Long Milgate), but this area was shut off by emergency services during the fire, meaning engineers couldn’t get to the isolator.
Adam, thanks for the explanation regarding isolating the overhead at Victoria it all makes sense now.It did cross my mind that when they declared the building unsafe, they were worried that if the building did collapse, it would drop onto the overhead and drag it down.