West Midlands Metro services between Edgbaston Village and Wolverhampton Railway Station are set to run at an increased frequency when the full route is reopened from Wednesday 10th April. There have been no trams between Wednesbury and Edgbaston Village since Saturday 23rd March with the main focus of this closure being the connection of the current line to the coming soon extension to Dudley (and eventually Brierley Hill).
It has been confirmed that this work is on target to be completed on time which will allow the full route to reopen as planned on Wednesday 10th April. The delta junction – which will allow trams to travel between Dudley, Wolverhampton and Birmingham – has been successfully connected and in the lead-up to the return of services overhead lines will be reinstalled alongside testing and commissioning ahead of the reopening of the Birmingham-Wednesbury section of the tramway.
As well as work on the delta junction the chance has also been taken to replace track at some stops on the line and this too has reached the stage that will enable a full service to resume.
The new delta junction stands over 6.2m tall and in the 18 day period of work teams working for Midland Metro Alliance there have been a number of tasks undertaken. The trackbed has been excavated, existing rails have been removed and been replaced by lowering pieces of the new switch and crossing into place via a huge crane.
And the good news is that the full service which does resume will see trams running every eight minutes. Although it still seems that the much anticipated reopening of Wolverhampton St George’s is still to come.
Sophie Allison, Managing Director of West Midlands Metro, said: “We understand the impact it has had on existing customers over the past few weeks. Every effort has been made to minimise inconvenience, and we would like to thank them for their continued understanding and patience, particularly as there will be some late-night disruption on some days over the next six weeks as Sandwell Council completes the rebuilding of Dudley Street bridge.”
As a reminder even though the full line will reopen from 10th April, there will remain late night closures due to work on Dudley Street Bridge being undertaken by Sandwell Council.
I hope history is not going to repeat itself as the last time a delta junction was installed back in 2021 on the line trams started to crack and we had no service in the Midlands.
A huge leap to imply cause & effect there!
So why don’t trams suffer cracks on other line that have Delta Junctions?? Could it be WM buying from C*** And F***** I wonder??