Over the weekend of 28th and 29th June Network Rail were undertaking engineering works at Victoria Station on behalf of Manchester Metrolink which should have seen the single line section swapped over. Unfortunately this work overran drastically which has meant that no services at all have been able to run through Victoria on Monday 30th June or Tuesday 1st July and at the time of writing it is not confirmed just when Metrolink will be able to resume services.
Metrolink services have been running from Bury to Crumpsall and Rochdale to Central Park with replacement buses in operation into Manchester city centre. All services from Altrincham and East Didsbury have been diverted to Piccadilly. In addition to the replacement buses Metrolink tickets have been accepted on local bus tickets and also on Northern Rail services between Rochdale and Victoria.
Once Network Rail have completed the works Metrolink need to carry out vital inspection and testing operations before passenger services can resume. Network Rail put extra resources on the job when it was clear the overrun looked like entering a second day but despite this the work still meant a complete second day was lost for services.
Network Rail finally managed completed the work overnight on Tuesday 1st/Wednesday 2nd July and handed the site over to Metrolink who then able to run their tests before clearing the line for passenger operations. Following the succesful completion of these tests normal Metrolink services resumed from the start of Wednesday 2nd July. Trams are now running on a new, permanent, track alignment although single line operation remains in place.
In these situations its easy to blame somebody or something,but overruns are quite common in this industry.I know these jobs are planned months in advance,but I still think somebody should have realised that there was to much work for one weekend.
It must have been a logistical nightmare for metrolink at such short notice.So you must give some credit to metrolink for running some sort of service.
This is a shame for Manchester Metrolink as there have been two announcements lately about the airport line being done early and the 2CC planned to open early, it is a shame the another company has let them down. I am sure that Manchester Metrolink are doing their best to help passengers get to their destination
Service back to normal today.
Just been on the evening news website and network rail say it was a problem with the power to the overhead line.Something about it not being the right voltage to operate safely,so it would suggest it was a problem in the substation.
It actually said ‘The overhead line equipment installed over the weekend is not safely providing the power needed to operate the tram which has resulted in the recent disruption’. There is no mention of wrong voltage to operate safely. The safety of the system can include the safe condition of the overhead equipment in terms of either electrical safety (insulation standards) or the physical safety such as the ability of the support structures to safely support the equipment.
Mr free107,
why do you have to correct everybody to the letter.I was just generalising about the statement from network rail,but I put in in different terms.All the words I used are there in the statement.The only word I changed was power to volts.