A full service (or at least what constitutes a full service at the moment) has resumed on the Altrincham line after repairs were completed to the signalling allowing more than one tram at a time to be in the Network Rail section on the approach to Altrincham. It has now been confirmed that the issue was caused by the fire at Balloon Street last week.
The full 10 minute interval service resumed during the afternoon of Thursday 17th June with these repairs completed.
In a statement before the resumption of services, Danny Vaughan, TfGM’s Head of Metrolink, said: “Following last week’s underground fire, work is continuing to restore a full service as quickly as possible to the Altrincham line. The incident, believed to have been caused by a build-up of gas, caused extensive damage to cabling, including signalling systems that are critical to safe operation of Metrolink trams over Network Rail’s tracks between Altrincham and Timperley. This has impacted services on the Altrincham Line. A manual safety procedure is currently in place and being managed by Network Rail, who operate the signals. As only one tram is currently allowed in the section at any one time, services have been reduced to a 20-minute frequency throughout the day.”
Services on the Altrincham line had been operated at a reduced frequency of every 20 minutes since Friday 11th June.