Thursday 31st January has proven to be a bad day for Stagecoach Supertram with disruption to both the Tram-Train service and the Blue route thanks to two separate overhead line issues – one on the railway section of the Tram-Train route and the other at Birley on the Blue route.
The more long lasting issue was experienced on the Tram-Train route with services suspended from very early in the morning – it is believed the first few services managed to get onto the railway section of the route but then became stranded – and didn’t resume operation until shortly before 1730. It is unclear why it took so long for a service to be resumed on this service as Stagecoach Supertram tweeted at around 1300 that power had been restored and that “we are currently recovering the tram trains that have been stranded during the disruption. Once these have been brought back to the depot and checked, we hope to resume services later today.” In the end it took a further almost four and a half hours for these checks to take place and the go-ahead given for the service to resume between Cathedral and Rotherham Parkgate. During the line closure there was ticket acceptance on First and Stagecoach buses.
Meanwhile, further power supply issues were experienced on the Blue route beyond Gleadless Townend towards Halfway with severe delays reported from shortly after 0900. For a time trams were able to run from Malin Bridge through to Dontesk Way and from Beighton Drake House to Halfway but later on the service was only running between Malin Bridge and Birley Lane. Then with the maintenance team on site trams from Malin Bridge were diverted to Herdings Park until a full service resumption was possible shortly after 1500.