Storm Eowyn made its presence felt on Friday 24th January bringing with it strong winds and warnings for people to stay at home and not risk journeys. Those who did need to make essential journeys would find it more difficult than usual as there was transport disruption including the complete suspension of tram services in both Blackpool and Edinburgh.
Edinburgh – and much of the central belt of Scotland – was under a severe red weather warning and although the previous day they had announced they were still hoping to run a reduced service the severity of the weather meant that this was not possible.
All services were suspended from 1000 with the Edinburgh Trams team keeping an eye on the weather for the rest of the day to see if it was possible to resume. Just after 1600 they announced that they would not be able to run any more services for the rest of the day as they needing to monitor the infrastructure to make sure it was safe to run trams again. This would see some trams sent out onto the line after 1700 to monitor the network. The hope is that a service would resume from the beginning of Saturday 25th January.
Meanwhile, whilst Blackpool was not under a severe red warning, its exposed coastal location meant that Blackpool Transport also made the decision to suspend services. There were also issues for bus services around the resort with damaged buildings and debris meaning there were diversions.
And whilst in Manchester it wasn’t a complete service suspension, there was significant disruption. This came after overhead line damage at Deansgate-Castlefield; and with this stop seeing all services expect the Bury-Piccadilly line going through it that was pretty major disruption.
The fault was first reported around lunchtime and initially saw no trams able to run between Deansgate-Castlefield and Firswood/Old Trafford/MediaCityUK/Wharfside in one direction and between Deansgate-Castlefield and Piccadilly/Exchange Square in the other. Some respite came late afternoon/early evening when services from Eccles and Altrincham could be extended to Cornbrook but disruption remained.
As at 1700 the following services were running:
- East Didsbury-Firswood
- Manchester Airport-Firswood
- Altrincham-Cornbrook
- The Trafford Centre-Wharfside
- Eccles-Cornbrook
- Ashton-Piccadilly
- Rochdale Town Centre-Exchange Square
- Bury-Piccadilly
In a statement TfGM said that staff were working hard to resolve the issue but that the changes were likely to remain in place until later in the evening. There was ticket acceptance on local bus routes.
Ian Davies, TfGM’s Interim Director for Metrolink, said: “We are doing everything we can to resolve this situation at Deansgate Castlefield but the conditions are making this very difficult and there is likely to be disruption for the rest of the day.”