With the strikes now over on the West Midlands Metro it should now all be systems go in operating the service and in the lead up to Christmas it has been announced that extra trams will be running at peak times (although these are not mentioned on the published timetable which retains “every 12 minutes” as the frequency throughout the bulk of the day). There has also been movement on the tram front with some of those which have already been repaired now receiving replacement blue vinyls whilst 48 has been delivered to the depot and 47 has been seen getting very close to entering service.
We start off by looking at the latest delivery to Wednesbury Depot from Spain – no. 48. As with all of the Urbos family of trams which run in the West Midlands – both the earlier Urbos3 and the newer Urbos100 variety – this tram has been built by CAF in Zaragoza and following completion was transported across to Bristol before being driven to Wednesbury Depot.
48 arrived at around 1230 on Friday 25th November (a month before Christmas!) and was soon unloaded and moved into the depot for commissioning to begin. It is the eleventh of the 21 Urbos100 trams currently on order of which nine have definitely run in service so far.
The previous arrival – 47 – was delivered on 28th September 2022 and if it hasn’t entered service yet it is very close to doing so. It has been seen outside the depot for a few days and has moved during this time so has either been out on test or has been used in service briefly.
Onto the Urbos3s and you’ll remember that when they originally returned to service the panels which had been replaced were in a plain white colour instead of having the WMM livery vinyls applied. Now a start has been made on putting the blue vinyls back on with both 18 and 19 having been noted running in full blue once again.
Friday 25th November also saw service disruption in the afternoon/evening when a signal failure meant that no trams were running beyond Priestfield so it was a reduced service between Edgbaston Village and Priestfield only. The full route was running again by the start of Saturday 26th November.
18 back in full blue with the white panels now having had the livery vinyls applied. This is West Bromwich Central.
Dudley Street is the location for this shot of 19 as it too shows off its full blue look once more. (Both Photographs by Andy Walters)
Hopefully they can get back to every 6/8 min service