Saturday 6th February saw the third of the current batch of 27 Bombardier built M5000s arrive at Queen’s Road Depot in Manchester – almost two months since the previous arrival. 3123 made the trip from Germany and will now be commissioned at the depot before being considered to enter service.
When the first of these 27 trams arrived in November 2020 it was said a new tram would arrive every 3-4 weeks although this has obviously slipped between the second and third arrival. 3122 was delivered on 12th December 2020 meaning that it was eight weeks between the two arrivals, presumably Christmas and the ongoing pandemic caused this delay.
So far, just 3121 has entered service with this seeing use just before Christmas 2020 (it was part of the Mayor of Greater Manchester’s promise that it would carry passengers before Christmas after all!). But since then it has only been used on a limited basis and 3122 has not yet entered service.
A further 24 of these trams will now be delivered from Bombardier. They were originally ordered to increase capacity on the current network but with passenger numbers having fallen drastically and TfGM expecting these to not increase for some time their purpose is slightly amended with an increase in doubles to aid social distancing now seemingly more important.