The benefit of having the Second City Crossing on Manchester Metrolink was plain to see on Saturday 12th May when a fault with the overhead close to Victoria meant that the original city crossing (1CC) was closed to city bound trams for over 12 hours. Before the construction of 2CC that would have meant major disruption with no trams able to run across the city but now a diversionary route meant that delays were kept to a minimum.
The fault with the overhead was at the junction of Balloon Street and Corporation Street with the support wire connecting the actual overhead wire to a building snapping. With the discovery of the problem shortly after 1100 services via 1CC were initially suspended in both directions whilst an investigation was started and to see what services could safely run. Following this trams were able to run via 1CC heading to Victoria and Bury but they remained unable to travel in the opposite direction for the remainder of the day.
During the disruption services from Victoria to the Airport and Bury to Altrincham direct were diverted via 2CC and then running as normal. In the direction from Altrincham and the Airport they were able to run as per the usual routing. For those trams which normally ran between Bury and Piccadilly the situation was a bit more complicated as it was impossible for them to head to Piccadilly, as a result they were diverted via 2CC and terminated in the centre platform at Deansgate-Castlefield. Trams on the East Didsbury-Rochdale Town Centre, Eccles-Ashton-under-Lyne and MediaCityUK to Etihad Campus routes were unaffected by this problem.
Repairs were completed on the overhead overnight allowing a normal Sunday service to operate the following day.