Done and dusted! The last of the Urbos100 trams for the West Midlands Metro has now entered service with 52 being used for the first time on Saturday 23rd December – just in time for Christmas making it a nice early present!
52 has been getting closer to being available for service over the past few weeks with testing, commissioning and mileage accumulation having taken place but despite the anticipation it would be running soon it remained firmly in the depot just waiting for when it would be put into revenue earning service. That day came on Saturday 23rd December with the tram entering service in the morning.
With 52 entering service this now means that all 21 of this batch of CAF Urbos100 trams have now been used in passenger service since being delivered. It has taken 32 months from the first of the trams (numbered 38–58) being delivered to Wednesbury to the last of them entering service. The first ran in service on 15th December 2021 (when 38, 39 and 40 were all used) and so a little over two years later and all have now been used.
West Midlands Metro (and as Midland Metro beforehand) has now had a total of 58 different passenger trams run in service since opening in 1999. This makes it second to only Manchester Metrolink on the total number of trams to have been used on a modern UK tramway. 42 remain nominally available for service (there have been no official withdrawals of any of the CAF trams although not all are operational at the moment, including some away at Dudley for repairs and others stored at Worksop).
Isn’t there 59 due as compensation for the troubles caused by the fleet failures and faults?
Its now thought that there won’t be an extra tram after all.
It also seems that 52 has not been used in passenger service yet either.