Rail replacement work on the South Yorkshire Supertram network got underway from Saturday 25th May with locations around Sheffield City Centre being worked on. These are publicised, as they usually are, as improving the network with the new rails planned to allow a more reliable and a continued safe service to operate. Stuart Cooke provides an update of some of the early work taking place.
The trackworks are taking place in Commercial Street and High Street and have seen a number of city centre tramstops closed between Saturday 25th May and through until the end of Sunday 2nd June. Stops at Fitzalan Square, Castle Square, Cathedral, City Hall and West Street are closed throughout this period whilst further work on the stop at Netherthorpe Road also means that is closed with trams passing through non-stop.
A revised service is running on Supertram which sees a temporary Green route introduced between Halfway and Meadowhall whilst the Blue and Yellow routes will only run from Malin Bridge and Middlewood to University of Sheffield. The Purple route is running Herdings Park to Cricket Inn Road and the Tram-Train Rotherham Parkgate to Sheffield Station.
Work underway at Fitzalan Square with contractors preparing to install new rails on the line heading onto Park Square Bridge.
A closer look at the worksite here with good progress having already been made in removing the old rails.
Further along High Street towards Cathedral and more work is taking place (and the reason why trams couldn’t use the stop to turn from either direction). Work is underway on the well used points here.
Stop refurbishment is taking place at Netherthorpe Road. Here we see the old shelter being removed. (All Photographs by Stuart Cooke, 25th May 2024)