London Tramlink had a day to forget on Thursday 14th March after the derailment of Variotram 2555 at Therapia Lane caused a major service suspension on the Wimbledon line. Earlier in the day there had also been a track fault at Addington Village which had meant trams had been suspended between Lloyd Park and Addington Village for a time.
The track fault near Addington Village had caused delays in the late morning period but repairs were soon conducted and trams were able to run back through to New Addington.
Unfortunately the day’s woes were not over there as during the afternoon 2555 managed to derail at Therapia Lane bringing the Wimbledon line to a standstill. The derailment happened as 2555 was using the crossover at Therapia Lane having reversed in the depot yard whilst operating a line 4 service between Therapia Lane and Elmers End. Photos show that the tram had just reached the crossover when the minor derailment occurred. No passengers were on board at the time as the tram was heading towards the platform to begin its journey.
Although from pictures it looked like a fairly minor derailment it caused severe delays with services suspended for around six hours whilst an investigation and resuce operation was conducted. During the disruption local buses were accepting Tramlink tickets between Croydon and Wimbledon and an attempt was also made to operate as full a tram service as possible. This saw five trams running a shuttle service between Beddington Lane and Wimbledon, a one tram shuttle between Therapia Lane and Reeves Corner and trams from New Addington running round the Croydon loop before heading back to New Addington. A replacement bus service was also in operation between Therapia Lane and Beddington Lane to bridge the gap between the trams. Lines 1 and 2 (to Elmers End and Beckenham Junction) were running as normal and it is presumed that line 4 was suspended although there is no official confirmation on this.
Unfortunately whilst all this disruption was taking place the official Transport for London website (http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/livetravelnews/realtime/trams/default.html) was claiming that a good service was running although the TfL Trams Twitter feed (https://twitter.com/tramslondon) was giving the correct information.
This is not the first time that a Variotram has derailed since delivery as there was an incident last year but this occurred actually in the yard at Therapia Lane and so did not affect services.