There have been some unusual journeys on Manchester Metrolink over the past few days with an undefined “track fault” at Victoria leading to service changes. The problems started on Monday 12th August and have been continuing since with the Manchester Airport and East Didsbry-Rochdale services swapping their routes within central Manchester.
The problems were first reported on Monday 12th August with platform A (the usual platform for trams heading to East Disbury, Piccadilly and Altrincham) closed leading to the centre platform (platform B) being used instead for through trams into the city. Platform B is usually used by the Manchester Airport trams which terminate there, wait out time and then return to the Airport. With the platform becoming a through platform it was necessary for trams on the Airport service to move forward to the turnback siding just the other side of Victoria before they could then return to the stop to start their return journey.
Unfortunately this wasn’t the end of the issue as the track problem has since led to a change to the service pattern for trams running to and from Victoria. Basically it has been the swapping of two services between 1CC and 2CC with the Manchester Airport service diverted to travel via 2CC with those trams running between East Didsbury and Rochdale using 1CC instead.
At this stage it hasn’t publically been said what the actual fault is with the track here or even when things may return to normal with just the dreaded “until further notice” mentioned on social media.