Storm season is upon us with Storm Ali causing major disruption across the northern part of the British Isles including service suspension on tramways in Dublin and on the Isle of Man.
The strong winds experienced in Dublin saw a tree fall on the overhead wires affecting services on the Green line. The tree fell between Beechwood and Ranelagh causing the overhead wire to come down and in the process this managed to become entangled with a tram’s pantograph. 10 trams were affected by this incident and trams were unable to run between Balally and Dawson from the late afternoon of Wednesday 19th October and into Thursday 20th October. Trams were running from Bride’s Glen to Balally and from Dawson to Broombridge only. Passengers wishing to travel on the affected section were advised to make their way to Dublin Bus services with ticket acceptance in place.
As Thursday 20th September dawned repairs had been unable to be completed leading to further delays for passengers during the morning rush hour.
Meanwhile, the Isle of Man was also severely affected with no services able to run at all on either the Douglas Bay Horse Tramway or Snaefell Mountain Railway. The Manx Electric Railway was also affected with a normal service starting the day before it was fully suspended part way through the day before the afternoon saw the resumption of a limited service only.
This is only the first storm of the latest season and hopefully it is not a taste of what we have to expect over this autumn/winter. Mind you I for one am looking forward to see what the seventh storm of the year brings…
Gareth, two small spelling corrections:
Storm Ali has only one ‘l’.
The Luas stop is “Bride’s Glen” (like a woman getting married!), not “Bridge’s”.
Thanks Geoff! I think that was the perils of writing an article very quickly at 6am!