Essential engineering works on the Stagecoach Supertram network to fully prepare the tramlines for the Tram Train vehicles is set to take place over several weekends in January and February which will see further disruption to tram services. Until these works are completed the first of the Tram Trains – which arrived in Sheffield at the end of November – will be confined to the Nunnery Square Depot.
Works will require revised services to run on Sunday 10th January, Saturday 16th January, Sunday 17th January, Saturday 30th January, Sunday 31st January, Saturday 13th February, Sunday 14th February, Saturday 27th February and Sunday 28th February. On all these dates the Blue route will run as normal between Halfway and Malin Bridge but there will be alterations to services on the Yellow and Purple routes:
Sunday 10th January
Work is taking place near to Meadowhall with buses running between Meadowhall South and Meadowhall Interchange.
Yellow route trams will run Middlewood to Meadowhall South
Purple route trams will run Herdings Park to Cathedral
Saturday 16th and Sunday 17th January
Work is taking place near to Attercliffe with buses running between Fitzalan Square and Meadowhall Interchange
Yellow route trams will run Middlewood to Cricket Inn Road
Purple route trams will run Herdings Park to Cathedral
Saturday 30th & Sunday 31st January, Saturday 13th, Sunday 14th, Saturday 27th & Sunday 28th February
Work is taking place around the Park Square bridge with buses running between Fitzalan Square and Meadowhall Interchange
Yellow route trams will run Middlewood to Sheffield Station
Purple route trams will run Herdings Park to Middlewood
Overnight engineering work to alter the track has been taking place since the end of October to minimise disruption to passengers but these works now due to take place are of a more complex nature and cannot be completed overnight hence the weekend closures. Further work will take place over the Easter period on the current network and work will also be necessary to install the 400 metre Tinsley Chord to connect the Supertram network with the Network Rail lines. Other works to be completed include the installation of overhead lines to carry electricity to power the vehicles and building new Tram Train platforms at Rotherham Central and Parkgate.
On Boxing Day and New Years Day a special Blue service was advertised as operating between Halfway and Meadowhall but this actually ran as the Green service. This view shows 111 at Halfway preparing to depart for Meadowhall on the very first day of 2016. (Photograph by Stuart Cooke)
As the Manchester trams first ran on ex-national rail system track, are their wheel profiles compatible with current NR specifications? Are the new construction parts of the Manchester network to heavy rail or tramway rail specifications? The same questions arise at Croydon and I am curious as to where the differences are and what drove the choices of track type employed.
Delay, delay, delay!!! In other words Normal Service as far as the UK is concerned! The tramtrain link at Meadowhall is only now being started!! And there is NO need for the tramtrains to grind round TWO right-hand curves (ye gods!) between the Meadowhall line and the Network Rail line as an almost straight link would be possible a little way back towards Sheffield. Unless of course the thickheads who plan these things insist on it!! But………this is the UK so stupidity is built-in to the system!
What sort of work is needed for tram-train? Does it need more clearance in certain places or is it more complex than that?
Tram vehicles typically have a very different wheel profile to main line rail vehicles, tram wheels generally having much narrower and shallower flanges. The tram train vehicles have to have a main line wheel profile, so that they can negotiate Network Rail’s pointwork without derailing. This means that the Supertram trackwork needs some rebuilding to cope with deeper-flanged vehicles.
The tram-trains must have tramway profile wheels or they would not be able to run over the tram system. Remember that Glasgow had 4ft 7 and three quarter inch track gauge all over the city so that railway trucks could share grooved tracks in the docks area. The railway trucks ran on their flanges in the grooved tracks. Sheffield is not going to convert the whole system to Glasgow gauge !
The solution is that points on the railway section must be replaced with those with pivoted moving frogs to eliminate the gaps which would otherwise give problems.
If you live in the London area have a look at the DLR in the Canary Wharf area. I think they are there to reduce noise in this application but they may allow railway-profile works cars to share tracks.
The need for the slightly narrower gauge in Glasgow (and other locations) was due to the shallowness of the groove in the tram rail. Modern trams generally have a larger flange (and the rail a deeper groove) than their predecessors.
I’m not sure moving frogs will be required – Remember Blackpool managed perfectly well with tramway wheels and mainline railway wagons sharing the open track between Copse Road and Thornton Gate including through ordinary railway type point work, and the Supertram network already has open railway type points in several locations…
The important thing is that nothing substantial needs to be changed on the existing tramway system, other than anywhere else when a different make of tram is introduced and the tram-trains should be able to be tested and accumulate mileage over the whole system fairly quickly. I would hope that one could be loaned to other systems for assessment during the trial.
The turnout at Meadowhall towards the railway can be built to tramway specifications because tram-trains will be the only vehicles to use it. From the point where it joins the railway all the way to Rotherham each set of points would have to be assessed and possibly replaced.
The need for moving frogs may show up later in the track lifetime as wear would accumulate for two different wheel profiles. It doesn’t sound like the tracks are going to be heavily used and it might be simpler to replace points as they show signs of wear before any hammer blows start to have an effect.
I just wish they were energizing the railway at 25KV to test the voltage changeover at Meadowhall.
Sheffield is seeing a repeat of the Edinburgh, where the trams were delivered years before the tracks were ready and could not run, and Cambridge, where the guided buses were delivered years before the track opened and so they could not run on it. Now Sheffield has new trams that cannot run yet because they cannot run there and the new line is not built yet. All of this shows that in the UK it is easier to get the vehicles than build the tracks on which they are to run, because delays in planning authorization and delays in construction thwart the plans of the operators.
If you study the documentation of the T&W Act Order I think that you will find that this went through quite quickly. The delays emanate elsewhere.
They will be running on test soon though, its not like they are waiting for a ystem to be finished like Edinburgh was!
As Mr Pennick implies, it’s all bureaucracy, bureaucracy, bureaucracy in our UK. Until we speed that up – until we WANT it to be speeded up – this state of affairs will continue. (And it doesn’t have to be so slow, remember the Workington temporary station? Or was that Whitehaven?)
Indeed it is bureaucracy and planning processes spun out for years and all that before the money is found (if the project is not cancelled meanwhile). So often authorisation is delayed, and uncoordinated with related projects, as with the second Cambridge rail station, where the busway extension to it was completed last year but is unused because station building only began this month having been delayed by council prevarication (2 years late). The drawn-out procedures for a few hundred metres of new track in Croydon for London Tramlink is the latest example of this structural inability to get anything done in due time. Many people want these necessary projects to be speeded-up but there is no political mechanism or will in government to do it.
UK procedures are long (for any public project) because all Governments and the Civil Service like to use exhaustive procedures of argument, objection, counter-proposal and more argument to demonstrate that every possible opportunity has been given for consideration of all points of view. It just seems to suit our national characteristics.
It seems that because anything new is bound to be objected to, so the interest groups that are anti-anything are always at the advantage. The problem with necessary projects is that there are no counter-proposals built-in to the process, and if the antis win, the project is abandoned at once with no prospect of ever being revived. There are never any alternatives prepared, which means that things are left as they are, deteriorating over the years without alleviating the problems that the proposed projects were designed to do. Mass transit in Leeds is the classic example where nothing has got done for decades. It is easier to destroy than to create.
I have been involved in schemes where a quite simple assessment has thrown up one blindingly obvious choice but “dumbo” alternatives were still put out to consultation so that the public could choose the obvious one!
Sadly you won’t see loans to other systems of modern vehicles for test purposes as unlike our friends abroad, everything is different over here and all the system specifications differ, such as clearances, platforms etc.