Back in the day (well, around 2019), the biggest problems to impact services on the West Midlands Metro were overhead line problems with relatively frequent issues seeing the service having to be suspended. Into 2022 and there have been far bigger problems for the West Midlands Metro with the entire fleet of Urbos3s having to be withdrawn for repairs. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t still infrastructure issues, as seen on Friday 1st July with a problem with the overhead at Hill Top Tunnel.
The problem was first reported on the West Midlands Metro Twitter at 0200 on Friday 1st July with an announcement that from the start of service trams would only run between Wednesbury Great Western Street and Wolverhampton St George’s. This was the situation until around 1235 when a reduced service was able to run between Wolverhampton St George’s and Bull Street, but only at 20 minute intervals.
Hill Top Tunnel is located between Black Lake and Wednesbury with the overhead problem actually being inside the tunnel itself, adding to the difficulties of repairing it. It was the overhead on the southbound track that was affected.
In order to complete full repairs of the overhead, the complete service was suspended after 2000. It was hoped that the repairs would be concluded in time for services to resume as normal (the normal service for now anyway) from the start of service on Saturday 2nd July.
Bham trams are just a very expensive joke
How is it the trams in Blackpool have been running over 100 years Bhams break down all the time ,they bought cheap and got cheap its just a joke in every way
Hi you had problems in Blackpool a few days ago it could not to the testing at Talbot road
Do you have any substantiated data concerning the costs of the trams and infrastructure on which you base your rather extreme statement? Yes The network has been plagued by problems recently but there again the national rail network has suffered very similar defects to those found on the CAF Urbos 3 trams and no-one could say the new trains were cheap.