Heaton Park depot work begins!

After seemingly endless delays and complications, work on the new tram depot for Manchester’s Heaton Park Tramway has finally commenced. After various materials and plant were delivered to the work site, near to the park’s boating lake, work on laying the foundations of the new building began in earnest on Tuesday 2nd July – a milestone day in the history of not just this line, but also British tramway history in general.

Initial work on 2nd July included surveying the ground, which had already been cleared a few weeks earlier ahead of the anticipated building works. The next day, a large quantity of cement arrived at the park, to form the basis of the foundations for the new building’s steel framework, to be known as ‘Lakeside Depot’. It is currently hoped that the basic structural work will be completed by the end of August or early in September, and then volunteers will begin the large task of laying tram track up to and inside the depot, as well as erecting overhead poles and wires. Hopefully, this will allow most of the Manchester Transport Museum Society’s trams that are currently in outside storage to move undercover before winter, and opens up some exciting possibilities for the tramway’s Autumn Gala event in November!

As an aside, the tramway has also taken delivery of several edging stones from the Metrolink platform at Mosley Street which is being demolished. Although this may not seem particularly significant right now, Metrolink is rightly considered part of the city’s rich transport heritage and as such, various artefacts such as this are being collected as they become available.

The arrival of various plant at Heaton Park on July 2nd, with the Lakeside Depot worksite visible in the background. (Photo courtesey of the Heaton Park Tramway Facebook page)

 

 

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