Our attention construction wise on the West Midlands Metro is being taken by the Wolverhampton Railway Station extension at the moment but that doesn’t mean that work on the two other extensions has stopped. In this article we take a look at a couple of photos of recent work on the Birmingham Eastside extension.
Due to open in full at some point after 2026 (due to the HS2 works needing to be completed before West Midlands Metro work can be done around Curzon Street), the 1.7km line will run from the delta junction at Corporation Street/Bull Street to High Street Deritend. At least half of the route will be built without overhead wires a la the Westside extension to Edgbaston Village.
Dale End is located towards the start of the extension (Birmingham City Centre end). The focus here has been the demolition of some buildings which were in the way of the planned alignment of the line. The buildings were fully demolished at the start of the summer and the site is now being cleared of the rubble. To add to the sustainability of the project the rubble is to be reused on other sections of the route.
At the other end of the route in Digbeth there has been excellent progress with the laying of tracks. As the tramway curves round from Meriden Street onto the B4100 in Digbeth we see some of the tracks which are now done but waiting for the final surface to be added. (Both Photographs by Mark Cufflin, August 2023)