You wait ages for one to enter service and then two do it around the same time! Both of the last two M5000s to be delivered to Manchester Metrolink have now carried their first passengers with 3146 and 3147 seeing service for the first time over the weekend of 15th and 16th October.
These two trams had been delivered during September with 3146 arriving at Queens Road Depot on 3rd September and then followed three weeks later on 24th September by 3147. Since their arrival they have gone through the usual commissioning process (which lets not forget also includes the vital application of the spots to its livery which don’t get added until the trams are in Manchester!) followed by mileage accumulation. Unusually for recent tram deliveries these seemed to run concurrently and so it was that the two entered service at around about the same time.
Whilst we don’t have an exact entry date for either they had been seen on mileage accumulation on Monday 10th October and were then noted in service over the weekend of 15th/16th October.
The entry into service of these two means that all 147 of this class – by far the largest modern tram fleet in the UK – have now run in service. Starting off with 3001 in 2009 (again we don’t have a date for it though but do know it was delivered in the July) it has taken 13 years for all of them to enter service (including a gap of just over four years in 2016-2020).
3146 is coupled to an unidentified partner as it leaves Piccadilly and snakes it way through Piccadilly Place on the way to Deansgate-Castlefield. (Photograph by Luke Putland, 22nd October 2022)
3147 working on the Airport line shortly after entering service. (Photograph by Philip Gay, 23rd October 2022)