There are now seven CAF Urbos3 trams at Midland Metro’s Wednesbury Depot following the arrival of number 23 early on Tuesday 13th May. 23 was the first arrival in Birmingham for over a month (22 having arrived back on 9th April) and joins the other six trams in being stored in the depot yard awaiting full commissioning, testing and driver training. Full driver training has yet to commence but it shouldn’t be too far off if a summer entry into service is confirmed.
Meanwhile work is continuing on extending the life of the T69 vehicles with 03 having recently donated equipment, including parts of its brake gear, to keep some of the others on the road. Parts from 03 will be used on 04 (which is expected to return to full service shortly instead of its recent limited operations) and 14 (which has been out of service since the end of April). 14 has now received new tyres on its south end bogies (Birmingham end) and its centre bogies has recently been spotted off presumably also receiving attention.
Recent vehicles to have seen attention in the workshops have been 05, 06 and 08 which have all had new tyres fitted on the south end bogies which seem to suffer from more wear than those at the Wolverhampton end of the trams.
It is difficult to understand why trams like these and those in Nottingham are still stored out of use. There will doubtless be many bureaucratic but if they are fit, surely – RUN THEM.
The route to acceptance is a long one involving Network Rail, the ORR, disability groups and other bodies who may be affected by their operation. In the case of Network Rail EMC is a big hurdle and both Midland Metro and NET run in close proximity to Network Rail lines. Generally once the first tram has been accepted the others are no problem but gaining acceptance for the first one is not easy.
On Saturday 5th April Tram 20 of Midland Metro went upto Snow Hill for the public to see one of the new trams. Surely Midland Metro would have need permission to run through to Snow Hill passing network rail lines. So it should’nt be too long before these trams come into service.
New trams may be operated next to Network Rail when no trains are operating i.e. in a ‘block’ or ‘possession’, and that is presumably how the tram arrived / departed at Snow Hill.