We may now have finally seen the opening of the West Midlands Metro extension to Wolverhampton Railway Station but that does not equal the end of construction work for the Midland Metro Alliance as there remain two further extensions which are being actively worked on at the moment. These are the Wednesbury to Dudley and Brierley Hill line and the Birmingham Eastside extension between Bull Street and High Street Deritend. In this pictorial we take a trip to the Eastside extension to see recent progress on construction work. Ken Jones is the photographer.
As we have reported many, many times there is currently no opening date for the full Eastside extension as it will not be able to open until HS2 works at Curzon Street have been completed (indeed West Midlands Metro works can’t start until that is done). There have been talks of opening part of the route ahead of this although there is nothing concrete to report on that at the present time. In the meantime work continues where it can on the line as these photos show.
This is the end of the line in Digbeth with a new bus stop currently being constructed.
Curved track is now in place by Birmingham Coach Station connecting those already laid in Meridan Street.
At the other end of the line, Bull Street has now been reopened to buses. These tram tracks will probably see a lot more buses running over them than trams for quite some time.
Back to Digbeth and this is approaching the end of the line with more track now down. (All Photographs by Ken Jones, 17th September 2023)