The morning of Monday 4th April saw the start of line 4 services running through to Wimbledon as planned with this southern terminus now enjoying 12 trams an hour (four on Line 4 and the other eight on Line 3 to New Addington). This was the culmination of months and years of work with significant sections of track doubled and the recent project to create a second platform at Wimbledon.
The first day was not without its problems but in the main scheme of things the issues recorded were not particularly major. On some occasions at Wimbledon the driver had to change the points manually and several trams were noted as arriving with “Out of Service” as their destination and “See Tram Front” on the Passenger Information Display. There was also some service bunching noting with at one time two trams waiting between Dundonald Road and the single line section to access the new layout at Wimbledon.
* A full gallery of images from this first day of the new service will follow on British Trams Online in the coming weeks.
2538 arrives at Wimbledon passing another tram in platform 10a. Note the destination. (Photograph by Irvine Cresswell)
2555 heads out to Elmers End passing platform 10a resident 2542. (Photograph by Tony Sullivan)
It’s good to see Tramlink quietly expanding its capacity by incremental improvements.
Just to be pedantic, the “southern terminus” at Wimbledon is actually the north-western terminus of the Tramlink network. It is admittedly also the southern terminus of the London Underground District Line!
It is indeed good to see the greatly increased service on the Wimbledon-Croydon line as the service on this section has been overcrowded for many years.