Another significant milestone has been achieved on Manchester Metrolink with the start of a short period of testing on the South Manchester line beyond St Werburgh’s Road to East Didsbury. The first test run took place on Thursday 4th October and further periods of testing were expected for the remainder of that week.
Residents near to the tramline, which is an extension of the South Manchester which currently terminates at St Werburgh’s Road, were sent letters to inform them that testing would take place between 2300 and 0500 each night. The line has five new stops at Withington, Burton Road, West Didsbury, Didsbury Village and East Didsbury and is expected to open to the public in summer 2013.
The extension to the South Manchester line is expected to be preceded by the opening of the Rochdale line (an extension of the current Oldham Mumps line) and the East Manchester Line to Droyslden, both of which have already seen some test running.
Look forwards to the service on all these lines starting. Would love to see the Droylsden line running in time for the Christmas shopping rush!
For the first time ever in my experience the traffic lights where the Droylsden line crosses the road coming out of the under croft at Piccadilly station were at red this afternoon. I thought I was going to see a tram cross, but it was the traffic light installers playing with their toys! Still it looks like some possible activity in the offing as I either drive past that junction or by the Manchester end of Ashton New Road and this is the first activity I’ve seen.
An M5000 was at New Islington stop on the East Manchester line early this afternoon, the tram appeared not to have any fleet numbers so was possibly a new delivery. According to the TfGM website today, night time testing is supposed to be taking place on this line now with daytime driver training starting later this month
Why test the Didsbury line in the wee small hours? What are they testing—- the drivers’ night vision or how good the headlights are on an M5000??? Or are they checking to see if any local scallies are out thieving copper wire? As a callow youth many’s the time I used to avail myself of a late 42X from Piccadilly Gardens to Withington Library after falling out of a Whitworth Street night club at stupid o clock in the morning. How nice to think Metrolink could provide such a service for today’s clubbers.
I’m assuming that the Didsbury line runs partly on public roads, in which case they will want to test the equipment when there is little or no road traffic about. Often involves road closures at intersections with the tramway which might cause disruption in daytime
Hello Ken. The Didsbury extension is entirely on old BR alignment and the trams don’t come in to contact with road traffic, even where they run alongside Olive Shapley Avenue at Didsbury Village stop they are comprehensively segregated. Happy memories for me of the old South District line, standing on Didsbury station as a Brit or Jub thundered past at over 90mph with an Up Express to St Pancras. See EM Johnson/Scenes From The Past 16 Pt 1 “The Midland Route To Manchester” ISBN 1-870119-20-7 for some great pics of how it all looked in the 50’s and early 60’s. Page 59 shows yrs truly alighting from D5584 from Mcr Central to Chinley. Happy days. 30th Dec was the last day for the Manchester trolleybuses too. :((
Hello Didsbury Boy. As the Didsbury line is completely segregated I can’t think of any reason for the testing to be at night, as I said I was working on an assumption that roads were involved as I’m not familiar with that side of the city, being brought up entirely on L&Y territory! I can recall my father once taking me from Manchester Central to St. Pancras but that’s all I can remember! As for the trolley buses, yes 30th December 1966 was certainly the last day. I had been planning to go but on the day decided not to bother, obviously at 14 years of age the significance eluded me. A recent visit to Sandtoft trolley us museum and a ride on Manchester 1344 reminded me not only how quiet they were, but what acceleration they had. They could certainly have kept their place in traffic today!
The M5000 has been parked up at New Islington tram stop during the day for the last 3 days, certainly at 5am and 2pm and is presumably being used for the night-time testing. It appears to have fleet numbers on the cab fronts only and none on the side, difficult to see the fleet number from the road but it looked like 3057.
Great for the East & South Manchester lines.
Three weeks ago, Oldham Advertiser stated that driver training was imminent but as yet there hasn’t been any. When looking at the track from the old Mumps roundabout towards the Rochdale extension there are still blocks across the track.