All of the Citylink Tram-Trains on Stagecoach Supertram have been temporarily withdrawn from service “due to a problem near Shalesmoor” on Friday 16th February. The exact nature of the problem has not been revealed by Stagecoach Supertram bosses but is evidently concerning enough to necessitate the complete withdrawal of all seven vehicles from service with immediate effect.
The statement released by Stagecoach Supertram says that the decision was made as “safety is our top priority” and that they are “working with the manufacturer to identify and rectify the problem”.
The introduction into service of these vehicles has been beset by delays with it taking 22 months between the delivery of the first tram-train to their first passenger use. It is ironic that recently their use seems to have increased further, indeed we reported earlier this week that five of the seven Vossloh/Stadler built vehicles were in service on one day.
Until such a time as these problems are solved there may now be disruption to Supertram services due to a shortage of available trams.
Meanwhile, another milestone in the Tram-Train pilot is set to be reached over the weekend of 24th and 25th February with the overhead on the Supertram network and that now installed on the Network Rail line due to be connected. As a result of this work no trams will run to Meadowhall throughout the weekend with all services on the Yellow route terminating at Valley Centertainment. A replacement bus service will run from Attercliffe to Meadowhall. On Sunday 25th February the Purple route will only run between Herdings Park and Cathedral.
Suppose the specific location (and gradient) will lead to some speculation. Particularly when there was a relatively recent temporary withdrawal of the CityLink Fleet seemingly in relation to sanding system which received very little coverage. Suspect the current timetable (and impact of availability) forced them to put something out this time. Fleet has certainly had bumpy start to operational life and that is before they have even had chance to turn a wheel on heavy rail section. Be interesting what the reports are elsewhere Karlsruhe, Chemnitz, Alicante, Valencia and others believe have variants of the same class.
It must have been a significant problem to initiate a fleet withdrawal. Lets hope whatever caused it is quickly identified and resolved so that testing can commence on the tram train route. The sighting of up to five Citylink cars in use simultaneously is interesting as I understood that only 3 of the 7 were intended for general Supertram use and at a talk given last week at the IMechE it was stated the wheel profiles on the 3 Supertram units were very different to those on the units intended for tram train use. Presumably some reproducing will be required on a number of vehicles before any running over Network Rail metals can commence.
I think that is the reason that 3 of the 5 were just running Meadowhall to Cathedral as they had the different wheel profiles as obviously the tram-train service will be running on this section (at least as far as Meadowhall South anyway) so will be clear to run here.
Thanks for the reply Gareth it all makes sense now.
Considering the year or so the new trams spent in the depot before turning a wheel on the operating lines, it seems very long time before the aforesaid problems were identified. Having otherwise identical trams with different wheel profiles seems to be asking for trouble, and if this is the case it is a serious limitation on flexibility of operation on all parts of the system. It seems to defeat the object of the exercise.
The tram train will have a different wheel profile until such time as the rest of the Supertram network is equipped with a compatible type of groped rail. The fleet of Citylink vehicles was effectively procured as 4 tram trains for the trial and 3 trams for capacity enhancement. In this way both the project and SYPTE benefitted from a better financial deal due to the larger numbers procured. Far better than 2 batches of totally different trams.