“Then & Now” moves away from the Manchester Airport line this week and we instead head onto the South Manchester line (although Airport line trams do also traverse the section we feature here).
Just after the tram leaves Trafford Bar and takes the junction onto the South Manchester line it turns left past Trafford Depot and goes under Ayres Road. And that is where today’s photos come from.
In this image – taken 4th March 2009 – we see that construction is already underway with a lone digger in the foreground. The sun may be out but there has obviously been some rain which has fallen fairly recently as its muddy underfoot. We are looking back towards the Altrincham line in this photo.
16th June 2011 now and it’s a much cleaner view with fresh track and ballast down as we again look back towards the Altrincham. Trams started running on the South Manchester line as far as St Werburgh’s Road less than a month later (7th July 2011) so this was a test/driver training run. (Both Photographs by Keith Chadbourne)
‘Then & now’ is an excellent series, Gareth; I hope there are lots more photos to come.
Hi Geoff,
It will definitely be continuing for the next few weeks as we continue to look at some of the Metrolink lines, but it won’t be a indefinite series at the moment.